


Requiem

by gaelicspirit



Series: The Scars Series [2]
Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blindness, Brotherhood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Homage, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Search and Rescue, extreme fatigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23842912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaelicspirit/pseuds/gaelicspirit
Summary: Set after 1.15Day the Past Came Back. Thomas Magnum can’t sleep. Too many ghosts, too many memories, all conspiring to keep him from even a few hours of peace. When his friend’s well-intentioned suggestions for respite go awry, Magnum takes matters into his own hands…and ends up alone, and adrift at the mercy of the Molokai Express current. His only hope now is that he’s rescued before the sea takes him.
Series: The Scars Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718065
Comments: 102
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer/Warning** : Nothing you recognize is mine. Including the odd movie line. I like to work in quotes now and again. And…the characters swear a bit more in my hands than they do on the show. Lastly, despite some serious google-fu on the medical shenanigans, inaccuracies abound so don’t try any of the medical stuff in this story at home, kids. Also? Everything I know about SEALs I learned from the entertainment industry—so take all of this with that particularly large grain of salt. 
> 
> **Author’s Note** : Title is in reference to the Robert Louis Stevenson poem of the same name. This story is a reboot-homage to the original Magnum, P.I., episode “Home from the Sea,” which was my favorite episode of the original show. The poem is the source of that episode’s title. I pulled in various elements from that episode to weave into this Magnum’s life. If you’re familiar with the episode, hopefully you’ll recognize some things. 
> 
> This story is in the same ‘verse as my first Magnum fic, _Witness Marks_ , which in turn was influenced by **IceQueen1** 's (or **disappearinginq** on tumblr) universe of Magnum fic. It’s not necessary to read that one to enjoy this one, though. Like _Witness Marks_ , this story continues to explore the psyche of scars—physical, mental, and emotional—as evidence of our collective journey, and a testament to our survival. 
> 
> Many sincere thanks to **IceQueen1** for the sanity read and continued encouragement. It’s fun being mental doppelgängers with you.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy.

Under the wide and starry sky,  
Dig the grave and let me lie.  
Glad did I live and gladly die,  
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:  
 _Here he lies where he longed to be;  
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,  
And the hunter home from the hill._

 _\- Requiem_ , by Robert Louis Stevenson  
  


* * *

**Chapter 1**

_Rick  
Saturday, 1:32am_

Some people were magnets. They drew his attention, his energy, just by walking into a room.

In his lifetime—thanks to his family’s somewhat _questionable_ ties—he’d met a lot of magnets, but none had drawn him with quite the level of energy as Thomas Sullivan Magnum.

It was a given that they’d be at odds, one being Navy, the other Marines. Tradition, even. But somehow with their group that had never happened.

Thomas—the smallest, slightest, and most physically unassuming of them—had easily shouldered the responsibility of being their Lieutenant, carrying them through multiple assignments and more hairballs than Rick bothered counting. When they’d been held captive, Thomas put himself front and center, taking the punishment so the others would be spared the worst of it.

Even his manner of acting as if the world was his playground now that they were back home, safe, was designed to draw attention to himself and away from others. Rick knew some often saw this as a detriment. Narcissistic, lazy behavior. But Rick new different.

He knew a human shield when he saw one.

As a sniper he’d seen too many, both those who survived and those who didn’t. And his friend Thomas, he was a survivor.

Except, the man who drew his eyes walking into the King Kamehameha Club tonight wasn’t anything like his friend Thomas.

“Jesus, what the hell happened to you?” Rick exclaimed, tossing the white towel he’d been using to dry a martini glass over his shoulder and leaning on the lip of the bar as Thomas approached one of the empty stools.

Thomas gave him a lopsided grin that missed his eyes completely. “What are you talking about?” He drew his head back in question as he swung a leg over the stool, then sank down as if he carried twice his body weight on his shoulders.

“You look like you pulled on hell of an all-nighter, man,” Rick let his eyes track the bruised circles that framed his friend’s dark eyes. “You on a case?”

Thomas folded his hands on the bar, shaking his head slowly as he lowered his gaze, lashes casting shadows on his cheeks from the overhead lights. “No case.”

Rick caught the eye of the floor security and jerked his head toward the bar, tossing the towel from his shoulder to under the bar and moved around to sit next to his friend. There were only two other people in the Club this close to closing time and he knew the security guys knew the drill: Thomas was an exception.

The two friends sat side-by-side, Rick listening as the last of the patrons were eased through the door, the locks were turned, the music and lights turned off one by one until all that was left was the glow of recessed lighting around the bar, the silence almost a sound unto itself.

Thomas stayed quiet and still, his eyes on the Cross of Lorraine ring visible on his folded hands, his breathing slow and steady. One thing they’d all learned during the 18 months they spent in captivity was there were times when words did nothing but fill silence.

And sometimes silence needed to stay empty.

So, Rick waited.

It was a practiced skill—and one he knew many were surprised he possessed. Long before he ever passed the rigorous training required to become a sniper, he’d known the value of patience. Waiting outside in the car until his dad—and then later his uncle—finished whatever business ended with the smell of gunpowder. Waiting until the right moment to step into a brawl so that he controlled the outcome.

In the Korengal, waiting became the route to survival. The days, _weeks,_ Thomas had been kept away from them became a true exercise in patience—and it had paid off. They’d all escaped. More or less.

But looking at Thomas now, Rick acknowledged there were times they’d never really leave the Korengal. His friend’s dark eyes were ages away, the way he held one hand in the other a familiar posture of resistance and protection. There were full months there at the end when Thomas had rarely spoken to them and didn’t even appear to know where he was.

But they could always judge his level of awareness by his hands.

“I can’t get her outta my head,” Thomas finally confessed, his voice barely above a whisper, gripping his fingers tightly.

Hannah. God _damn_ Hannah.

Rick canted his head, playing the odds on this one. “It’s hard to forget someone who shot you.”

Thomas reached one hand up toward his still-healing shoulder, his palm against where Rick knew the puckered scar of yet another bullet wound to be.

“It’s not that,” Thomas protested.

And that’s where they diverged.

Because for Rick, it was _exactly_ that. It was the fact that the woman unapologetically changed their lives, bringing each of them to their own personal edge, nearly killing Thomas in the process, and all-but shrugged it off as a necessary evil the minute she returned.

While Thomas was recovering in the hospital from both a bullet wound and some gnarly road rash after being shot from a moving vehicle, Rick and TC took a moment to process all that had happened.

Meaning they got shit-faced drunk.

TC, ever the gentle giant, couldn’t contain his feelings of betrayal. He’d truly trusted Hannah, hadn’t wanted to believe she was the reason they’d been caught—even after Thomas had shared what he’d witnessed while in their first camp. And with the woman showing back up on the island just to steal a truck load of gold, TC was hurt and confused.

But Rick…he was just _angry_.

There was no sense of hurt or betrayal laced through the rage, it was simply a hollow, festering fury that ricocheted around inside of him. He knew at some point it was bound to punch through and tag someone—a lifetime of knowing what happens when the wrong person gets caught in the crossfire the only thing keeping it caged.

“What is it, then?” Rick asked, willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. It was Thomas she’d damaged the most, after all.

Thomas shook his head, his dark eyes pinned to the bar top as though intent on burning holes through the wood with simply an expression of pain.

“She could have killed me…but she didn’t.”

Rick scoffed. “She came pretty damn close.”

“There was something else,” Thomas shook his head again, his brows folded as if thinking hurt. “Something driving her.”

“You mean other than greed?” Rick pushed away from the bar, rotating his body so the lip pressed against the middle of his back, his elbows hooked on the edge. “She’s bad news, Thomas. We should have seen it earlier.”

“People aren’t born bad, though,” Thomas replied, gaze pinned to his hands. “This world changes them. Turns them.”

“I know you don’t want to admit it,” Rick ducked his head, trying to catch Thomas’ eyes. Heat spiked in Rick’s gut when his friend wouldn’t look at him. “But she was playing us. Playing _you_.”

Thomas’ head twitched as if he was shaking off the thought. “She needed that gold for something.”

It was more the soft, curious cadence of Thomas’ voice than the words themselves that lit the waiting fuse inside of Rick. In an explosion of motion that surprised even him, he pushed away from the bar and slid from the stool, pacing four steps away from Thomas.

“Nuzo _died_ because of that gold, Thomas,” Rick spat.

Thomas didn’t turn around. “I know.”

“You know.” Rick shoved a hand through his hair.

“She didn’t mean for that to happen,” Thomas said quietly.

“She didn’t—” Rick pivoted on his heel and turned toward Thomas, moving before he could check himself. He grabbed Thomas’ shoulder and pulled his friend roughly around to face him. “What the hell is the matter with you, man? You’re actually _defending_ her?”

For a moment Thomas looked confused, his bruised, tired eyes darting from Rick to the darkened club behind him then back to Rick. If Rick had been of a cooler mind, he would have seen the signs, would have recognized that Thomas was disassociating…slipping away from the present by the sheer force of his memories.

But Rick wasn’t paying attention, not in that moment.

He was fueled by emotion and rage, triggered by a pain he’d never taken time to define. He’d simply learned to live with it like a sidekick, a companion, a check-and-balance to his humor and _just roll with it_ approach to life.

“You of all people know there’s no defense of something like that.”

Hands hanging loose at his sides, throat working as he swallowed, Thomas slid off the stool, squaring off with Rick as though someone was pulling his strings—moving on instinct and muscle memory alone.

“There’s a _reason_ she did what she did,” Thomas continued. “A reason she took that truck—she was trying to tell me, but—”

“Oh, fuck her reasons!” Rick shoved at Thomas, sending the smaller man stumbling back a step. “She _tried to kill you_ , Thomas. Again!” He set his hands on his hips to keep them from curling into fists. “All those months…all that time…all that…that _pain_. Because of _her_!” He was practically shouting now, not seeing Thomas bringing his hands up in a defensive posture. “And you stand there and…and fucking _defend_ her? No.” He shook his head hard. “No way, man.”

“She wouldn’t do that unless something was—”

Rick’s punch was fueled by words unspoken, pain unacknowledged. He didn’t even realize he was swinging until he felt the sharp, shocking pain stagger through the bones of his hand as it impacted with Thomas’ jawbone. It wasn’t until the crash of Thomas’ body against the bar stools reverberated through the empty Club, the wood clattering against tile, a stuttering _oof_ shoved from Thomas’ lungs, that Rick blinked aware.

“Oh shit,” he breathed, staring down at Thomas, frozen to the spot for several heartbeats. Thomas lay dazed on the tile—not quite out, but definitely not all there. “Oh shit, Tommy,” Rick crouched down next to his friend, a hand going to Thomas’ shoulder.

The smaller man flinched violently, jerking away from Rick’s touch, his back hitting the underside of the bar with a solid _thunk_.

“Tommy, I’m sorry, man,” Rick whispered, holding himself still, finally seeing the bleary confusion held captive in Thomas’ eyes.

Thomas braced himself up off the floor on one elbow, the other hand out, fingers splayed as though in warning. He wasn’t looking directly at Rick—he wasn’t looking directly at anything—but Rick new intimately how dangerous his friend could be when hurt and cornered.

“Easy, man,” he crooned. “It’s just us here.”

Thomas blinked, shaking his head sluggishly as though clearing his vision. He looked up at Rick for almost a full minute before Rick saw awareness and recognition slip back into his friend’s gaze.

“Rick?”

Nodding, Rick sat back on his heels, still not touching Thomas. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Thomas opened his mouth gingerly, then moved his raised hand to his face, carefully working his jaw to the side. Rick winced; his hand still hurt. That was going to bruise something fierce.

“Did you…hit me?”

“I’m so sorry, Thomas,” Rick exhaled. “I didn’t even see it coming, I just….”

Thomas looked around at the quiet Club, as though surprised to find himself there. Rick’s guilt spiked to worry. Had he hit harder than he thought?

He reached forward slowly, telegraphing his movements, and grasped Thomas’ upper arm, helping the man shift to a more comfortable position. Pushing the downed bar stool aside, Rick slid across the floor to sit next to Thomas, their backs against the bar.

“What were we talking about that got you pissed enough to hit me?” Thomas asked, his fingers gently dabbing at the red mark along his jaw.

“Hannah,” Rick said.

On a long exhale, Thomas drew his knees up, folding his arms across them and dropping his head low.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

They sat for several minutes in silence.

“Why aren’t you angry?” Rick finally asked, needing to know he wasn’t the only one who felt like a lit fuse lived under his skin.

“I am,” Thomas replied, his voice sounding hollow in the echo chamber of his knees.

Rick huffed out a breath of air. “Really? That why you insist there’s a _reason_ she got us captured, nearly killed, and then stole a truckload of gold?”

Thomas was silent a moment, then, “I keep…dreaming about her.”

Rick looked over at him, surprised. “Dreaming?”

“More like…nightmares.”

And suddenly, Rick got it. The search for meaning. Something to ground himself in. Thomas had done the same thing when the night terrors after the camp wouldn’t leave him in peace—grounded himself in the fact that they survived for and because of each other. That’s all he’d been looking for; he needed that balance now.

“Man, I am a world-class jackass,” Rick sighed.

Thomas tilted his head back against the bar, still working his sore jaw. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“You should be kicking my ass,” Rick lifted an eyebrow, looking askance at his friend.

“I’m too tired, man,” Thomas huffed a weak laugh.

And he could see it; Thomas looked utterly exhausted.

“How much sleep you getting?”

Thomas lifted a shoulder. “Maybe two, three hours a night.”

Rick puffed out his lips. This was not good.

“I keep…seeing her. Seeing…Nuzo in the back of that ambulance. The cave, the hole…and that…that interrogation room. You and TC beat to a bloody mess. And she’s there. Every time. Just…,” Thomas flopped a hand toward the darkness surrounding their little oasis by the bar as if he were seeing Hannah now, “…just standing there. Staring at me. Those damn eyes of hers. And she’s…she’s challenging me. Or maybe,” he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, “maybe she’s accusing me. I can’t tell anymore.”

“Dreams are funny things, man,” Rick offered. “Half the time it’s just us beating ourselves up.”

“Yeah, I know,” Thomas sighed. “Doesn’t make it any easier to sleep, though.”

Rick ground the heel of his hand into his eye, trying to keep from apologizing again for hitting Thomas—the man had already forgiven him, he knew. That was just Thomas. He forgave Hannah the minute he found that truck cab empty.

But he still felt like an ass.

“Maybe a change of scenery would help,” Rick suggested.

“Meaning, what?” Thomas frowned, glancing over at him.

“Sleep here at the Club tonight,” Rick said, meeting Thomas’ eyes. “I gotta do inventory; you can have the bunk in the back.” And he could keep an eye on him, in case that punch had rattled a few more things than either of them realized.

Thomas stared at him for several beats—almost long enough Rick thought he was going to resist—and then nodded.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I don’t know if I can see straight to drive home anyway.”

“Goddamn glass jaw,” Rick teased.

“Fucking hothead,” Thomas returned.

Rick nodded; he’d give him that one.

Standing, he reached down and offered Thomas a hand, pulling the other man to his feet in one fluid motion. Thomas blinked a bit at the change in elevation, not immediately letting go of Rick’s hand—which cemented the other man’s decision to keep an eye on him. Rick had always been tactile in nature; contact with his friends, his brothers, grounded him and helped him feel connected.

Thomas had always been a bit more distant. Not reaching for contact, not leaning on them unless necessary. Rick squeezed his hand slightly before releasing it and making sure Thomas could stand without wavering.

“You know where the cot is,” Rick said, nodding to the door behind the bar. “There’s extra blankets in there.”

Thomas frowned. “How come?”

Rick clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Inventory, remember? I’m literally giving you my bed for the night.”

Thomas rubbed at his jaw again. “Pretty sure I earned it,” he said, offering Rick a disarming smile.

Rick chuckled, watching Thomas move through the swinging door, marveling at his friend’s elasticity. They all compartmentalized—they’d had to in order to survive everything life had thrown at them. But Thomas did more than that; he bounced.

Where Rick found his shadows and darkness pulling on him like ghosts seeking to drag him into a metaphorical hole inside his own mind, Thomas shown a light so bright within him that it drove away the darkness in others. He put the pain and shadows away in some box inside himself, closed the lid, and turned back toward the light.

Rick would never understand how the man did that. It wasn’t as if his childhood and youth was filled with lollipops and rainbows. His dad died when he was six; his mother raised him alone. Like the rest of them, he’d worked for everything he had. Rick supposed some people were just born with the sunshine gene.

Which was why it was always as a shock to him when he saw evidence of Thomas’ nightmares.

Once Thomas headed to the back room, Rick tried to distract himself by diving into the inventory. He wanted to go back and check on his friend, but he didn’t want to crowd him. There were some things a man had to go through alone.

After nearly two hours of counting stirrer straws and sugar packets, Rick tossed the clipboard on the bar top and dropped his head into his hands. He was no good at this alone thing.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket he texted TC.

>>You up?

There was a lengthy pause where Rick stared so intently at the screen, he started to see stars at the edges of his vision.

_> >It’s 2am. Why wouldn’t I be up?_

>>Need 2 talk.

_> >There or here?_

>>Here’s good.

_> >What’s up?_

Rick met TC in the Marines, but it seemed strange to think they hadn’t been part of each other’s childhood. The man got him on a level most didn’t—he knew when to step forward and when to back down. He knew Rick’s hyper-vigilance when it came to Thomas was the result of hard-fought survival, and he never stepped into the middle of it. He merely offered scaffolding to keep them both intact until they were able to rebuild their walls.

>>I hit Thomas.

Another pause, this one where Rick could imagine TC sitting up, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed, and muttering a well-placed, _the hell_?

_> >You okay?_

Rick took a shuddering breath. He could picture the look on TC’s face based on just those words blinking at him from the bright, backlit screen of his phone. When had they become these people who survived on this strange form of coexistence where so much was revealed with two simple words?

>>Not sure.

_> >Where is he now?_

>>Back room. Nightmares. Told him to stay.

_> >And you needed to keep an eye on him._

>>*thumbs up emoji*

_> >Forgive yourself. He already has._

>>I know. That’s what sucks.

_> >Maybe it’s what he needs._

>>Another beating?

_> >Someone who cares enough to knock sense into him._

Rick exhaled harshly. He hadn’t even had to tell TC that it was about Hannah. The man already knew.

_> >Need me there?_

>>I’m good.

_> >You sure?_

“Yeah, big guy,” Rick whispered. “You freaking genius.”

>>Go back to sleep.

_> >Don’t have to tell me twice._

Rick knew that TC would show up first thing in the morning. It’s what they did: kept each other whole.

He set is phone down on the bar top and headed to the back room. His sneakers shuffled in huffs against the tiled floor as he moved past the floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with canned food, napkins, and non-perishable drink mixes. The Club was never this quiet. It seemed to press around him like a held breath.

He knew Thomas was caught in a nightmare even before he made it to the curtained area the separated the sleeping cot from the storeroom shelves. The energy in the room crackled with a familiar tension—one he hadn’t really felt since the Korengal.

He paused in the doorway, one hand pushing the curtain back against the door frame. Thomas lay on his back on the canvas cot, the green military blanket twisted around his legs and torso. His shirt was gone, and one bare foot stuck out from the bottom of the blanket.

Seeing the nightmare written across his friend’s face took the breath from Rick. It was a different thing to hear, to imagine, than to actually _see_ ; the sheen of sweat covering Thomas’ face and chest, the tension twisting his features, forehead crinkled as though in pain, eyes shut like they were fighting to keep reality out.

Rick moved on instinct; touch had so often settled him in times past, he simply acted on the only thing he knew. Besides, it had worked before when a cage had been their home.

He crouched next to the cot, resting his hand on Thomas’ shoulder then gliding it over his bicep, over his forearm and back up, making sure his touch stayed constant and assuring, firm yet gentle. Something that could cut through sleep and the tethers of fear. His own shoulders relaxed as Thomas’ breathing steadied and the strain on his bruised jaw eased a bit.

As the muscles under his hand loosened, Rick grimaced at the sweat-soaked canvas sling of the cot, wondering if he should wake Thomas or just let him rest while he could. Thomas sighed, shifting on the cot so that he moved away from putting pressure on his healing shoulder. Rick decided to let him sleep, foregoing the rest of the inventory to sit on the floor, back against the wall, next to the cot.

The tile was cold, turning his backside numb until he was able to draw his knees up and lean a bit on the wooden frame of the cot to find a comfortable position. He listened to Thomas’ breathing, occasionally resting his hand on his friend’s bare shoulder, feeling the heated skin, the contrast of the rough blanket, waiting for the breathing to return to normal.

After a bit, the quiet of the room broken only by the steady cadence of Thomas’ breathing lulled Rick into a doze and he let his head drop to rest on his bent arm against the cot. Several hours later, Thomas woke with a start, his desperate gasp for air bringing Rick around. He looked over to where his friend lay, tense and still, eyes darting around the storeroom in confusion.

“Morning,” Rick yawned, stretching his arms over his head. He ignored the way Thomas flinched at the unexpected sound of his voice and instead groaned loudly as he pushed to his feet. “That is _not_ a comfortable floor.”

Thomas rubbed the top of his head, his short, black hair standing up in random tufts and making him look all of twelve. “Are _any_ floors comfortable?” His voice was rough, as if he’d been screaming for hours.

And as far as Rick knew, he very well could have been in his dreams.

“Okay, good point, but I used to be able to lay motionless in a sniper blind for hours and not feel this bushed,” Rick returned, twisting his back and feeling the satisfying crack in his spine.

Thomas grinned and Rick was relieved to see some of the usual light hit his eyes. “Yeah, well, I tread water for over eighteen hours once during BUD/s,” he revealed. “Really pretty sure I couldn’t do that again.”

“Not without some serious training and a few thousand hours with a masseuse afterwards,” Rick nodded, yawning again. “Breakfast?”

“Let’s wait for TC,” Thomas suggested, casting about for his Hawaiian shirt.

Rick chuckled. “He’d hate that he’s so predictable,” he said, tossing the shirt to Thomas.

He couldn’t help the frown that slipped across his features as he caught sight of the knotted scars on his friend’s torso. Except for the slim, white line that ran across his shoulder—a souvenir from a bike wreck when he was fourteen—Rick knew exactly when each of those scars were formed and still marveled that his friend was alive and kicking in spite of the damage.

Or, maybe it was _to_ spite it.

“Whatever,” Thomas laughed. “I wake up in the storeroom of the club, you’re sleeping on the floor next to me, and my jaw feels like I stepped into the ring with Balboa—”

“I’m not living that down anytime soon, am I?”

“—no way you didn’t call him last night,” Thomas finished buttoning his shirt and rubbed his hand over his hair in an attempt to tame it.

“I didn’t,” Rick proclaimed.

Thomas raised an eyebrow.

“I texted him.”

Thomas chuckled.

“Yo, Rick! Thomas! You back there?” TC’s voice bellowed through the empty Club.

Thomas grinned at Rick, clapping him on the shoulder. “Let’s go eat.”

Rick followed his friend through the storeroom and out into the empty club. At six in the morning, the Club wouldn’t be opened for business for several hours yet, but some of the work crews arrived early and one of the janitors had let TC in. Rick smiled as TC pulled Thomas in by one hand for a shoulder bump then lifted his chin in Rick’s direction.

“Think you two can keep from brawling long enough to go somewhere with me?”

Thomas reached up to massage his jaw. Rick flexed his sore hand. TC looked between the two of them, waiting.

“Up to him,” Thomas said, glancing at Rick, the corner of his mouth ticked up in a small smile.

Rick pushed out his lips. “I make no guarantees.”

“Whatever,” TC grinned, dropping his hands onto their shoulders. “Look, I think we all need something.”

Thomas frowned, exchanging a puzzled look with Rick then followed TC out of the Club and to the orange and yellow Island Hoppers van. Rick automatically climbed into the back, leaving the front passenger for Thomas. He settled in the middle of the seat where he could catch TC’s eye in the rear-view mirror and still see Thomas’ profile. The incongruous smell of the coconut-and-lily air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror was tempered by the salty air carried in through the opened windows.

TC hung an elbow on the edge of his window while Thomas leaned his head back, facing the breeze with his eyes half shut. Rick could see the bruise forming on his jaw, spreading a bit across his chin. Thomas may have forgiven him for that, but Rick wasn’t going to let himself off the hook for a long time. He still couldn’t believe he’d let it happen. He was usually in a lot more control.

It took about ten minutes of driving before he realized where TC was taking them.

Thomas picked up on it at the same time if his posture was anything to go by. Rick watched as he shifted away from his slouch against the opened window and his shoulders squared as though preparing for a blow. Rick pressed his palms flat against the seats on either side of himself for balance.

He hadn’t been here since the funeral. He wasn’t sure any of them had.

“TC, man…,” Thomas said quietly, his voice an echo of each tautly strung muscles Rick could see along his profile and down his neck to his shoulders.

“Nah,” TC shook his head once. “I’m not listening to anything either of you have to say about this right now. We’ve been avoiding this place like death is contagious and after last night…after the last _two weeks_ …,” he shook his head again, but this time it was more of a pendulum motion, one that Rick recognized as the man staving off emotion, “…after Hannah. We need this, T.M. _You_ need this.”

Thomas swallowed and turned away from TC and toward the opened window. Rick simply breathed. He felt his heart crashing against his ribcage like a trapped thing trying to escape. He couldn’t stop swallowing. He shouldn’t have this harsh of a reaction to a location…what _the hell_ was going on with him lately?

They rolled through the opened gates of the cemetery and TC drove slowly through the curved, landscaped roads until he reached the simple stone that marked the final resting place of their friend, Sebastian Nuzo. TC turned off the van and for a moment, none of them moved. Rick wasn’t even sure they were breathing.

Then TC opened his door and both Rick and Thomas startled at the motion. He closed it behind him, the sound seeming to shimmer through the silence, and moved away from the van toward the white stone. Rick glanced once at Thomas, who still had his face resolutely turned away, and then followed TC.

The two Marines stood side by side, Rick’s shoulder hitting just below TC’s, he stood so close. They stared at the words carved on the stone, remembering.

“I miss you, man,” TC said softly, and Rick could hear the emotion trapped at the back of his throat. “You’re supposed to be here. Help keep us whole.”

“What do you think he’d have said about my hitting Thomas?” Rick asked, a nervous flutter shooting through his gut.

Nuzo had been crazy protective of the youngest among them. He, too, seemed to notice the bond Thomas and Rick forged—it was inevitable once Rick was forced to keep an eye on the Lieutenant through the scope of a sniper rifle. Acting as Thomas’ Overwatch gave Rick a sense of responsibility over his life; TC called it the Chinese life debt syndrome.

Despite that, there had been _nothing_ that got in the way of Nuzo doing everything in his power to keep Thomas in one piece—despite the younger man’s seemingly continued attempts to shatter himself like water on rock. But no matter how infuriating Thomas could be—and Rick was the first to admit Thomas could press buttons like nobody’s business—Nuzo had never struck the other man. Not once.

“Not sure,” TC replied. “You thinking he’d blame you?”

“He’d have said good,” came Thomas’ voice from behind them. Rick and TC turned as one, watching as the smaller man made his way forward, then rotating in unison as he walked past them to stand next to the grave’s headstone. “He’d have said I was being an idiot and I deserved it.”

“You weren’t—” Rick started to protest, but Thomas shot a look over his shoulder and Rick felt the words curl up and die in his throat at the heat in his friend’s dark eyes.

“I deserved it,” he repeated. “She hurt you both,” he continued, then looked back at Nuzo’s stone. “And for all we know, she helped get Nuzo killed.”

Rick felt TC shift next to him, his hands at parade rest behind him. He wondered at that, wondered if TC had drawn a similar conclusion. It hadn’t occurred to him, but it made a sick sort of sense. They had no idea how many places Hannah had made connections.

“I was afraid to come here,” Thomas said softly, resting the tips of his fingers against the stone. “Every day without him…when I think about him being gone it’s like…,” Thomas’ free hand curled into a fist, “…like pieces of broken glass inside me.”

“I know,” TC’s deep rumble seemed to slip into the space between them and fill it up. “But you needed to come here, Thomas. Hell, we all did. He was part of us. Still is. And we’ve been walking around like we ain’t been limping through life without him.”

Thomas kept his fingertips on the top of Nuzo’s headstone as he turned to regard TC carefully. The energy between the three of them felt familiar to Rick—like the moments before orders were handed out. But this time, it wasn’t Thomas doing the talking.

“You had this phrase,” TC continued, his eyes on Thomas. “Said it every time we went out on mission and it went sideways. You said it when we were taken, when they tried to separate us, when you stepped in front of their fists and their weapons. You said it mostly to Nuzo, but…it was for all of us.”

Rick watched as Thomas paled with TC’s words, his dark, expressive eyes pinned to TC’s face as though doing so kept him anchored. A muscle in his jaw knotted under the bruises. But he kept his fingers on the headstone as if he were holding onto Nuzo with that connection.

“You bleed, I bleed,” Rick said softly, noting the moment Thomas’ eyes darted from TC to him and then back.

He felt TC nod. “You bleed, I bleed,” TC repeated. “It was a code, brother. A promise. And you lived it. Every day, you lived it.”

Thomas swallowed again and Rick saw his eyes shine with the burn of tears.

“All this with Hannah?” TC relaxed his stance, waving a hand casually in the air as if dispelling smoke. “It doesn’t change that. Not one bit.”

Thomas’ chin bounced, and he turned his head slightly, visibly fighting to keep the tears from falling.

“I should’ve…,” he started, emotion choking his words.

“Should’ve what?” Rick challenged.

Thomas looked down to where Nuzo’s name was etched into the stone, tapping his fingers against the top of the stone in an uneven cadence. “I should’ve been able to find him faster. I should’ve figured it out sooner.” Tears flooded his voice and Rick saw them track down his friend’s cheek, disappearing off the edge of his jaw. “I should’ve… _saved_ him. I should’ve known what Hannah was up to. I should’ve been able to stop her.”

Rick opened his mouth to protest his friend’s self-flagellation but stopped when he felt TC’s hand on his arm. Thomas took a shallow, shaking breath, dragging his forearm across his eyes, dismissing the tears.

“Ah,” he ground out, the sound an exhale of pain Rick felt more than heard. “But I wasn’t. I didn’t. And he died. And she got away. I didn’t bleed.”

“Like hell you didn’t,” Rick protested and was relieved to feel TC’s hand drop away, as though in permission. “You think Nuzo didn’t know you did everything you could to find him? You think he’d _want_ you blaming yourself to the point you can’t sleep?”

Thomas swallowed hard but didn’t look at him.

“That man loved you like a brother, Thomas,” Rick said, stepping forward. “He would have burned the world down to get Hannah after she shot you.”

Thomas looked down, his fingers never leaving the top of the stone.

“I brought you guys here,” TC said, drawing Rick’s eyes with the serious tone, “because Hannah coming back ripped up something in all of us.” He stepped forward, reaching out and resting a hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “And we all need to put it back together again.”

Thomas frowned. But Rick was starting to see the continuing genius of their big friend. The man really missed nothing.

“You gotta forgive yourself, man,” TC said quietly, dropping his hand. “What Hannah did…it’s on _Hannah_. Not you. You’ve bled enough for us over her.”

Thomas glanced over at Rick, then back at TC, before once more looking at the headstone. For several minutes they all three stood quietly. Rick’s eyes tracked to the connection of Thomas’ fingers against the headstone, the light tattoo he tapped against the marker.

He could hear a call of a Mynah bird, the sigh of wind high above against the palm fronds. They stood so still he imagined he could hear each of their heartbeats. When Thomas took a breath, Rick felt the world breathe with him.

“There was this time, right after we graduated BUD/s,” Thomas began, “when we got our first orders. Nuzo and I were standing on this beach…same one we’d been on when half the squad rang out.” He smiled slightly—a kind of young, wistful thing Rick hadn’t seen in a long time. “It was one of those nights where you could _feel_ a storm coming, y’know? The clouds hung real low, like the world had a ceiling, but we could see the edge of the sunset at the same time.”

Rick found himself nodding, picturing it as his friend talked.

“I can still hear the sound of the waves, man,” Thomas shook his head, running the tips of his fingers along the top of the headstone. “I remember I thought they sounded soothing—like home.” He glanced over at Rick and TC. “’course, they’d basically tried to see if we could grow gills, so in a way…it was.”

TC bounced his head, a small smile tipping up his lips.

“Anyway, I was ready to head in and hit the sack, but Nuzo…he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the sunset. We’d been through the crucible together. I said survived it because of him…he said he survived it because of me. We were both right.” He lifted a shoulder, pressing his lips out as his brows drew together in a frown. “And wrong.”

He tapped the same slow rhythm against the stone, memories sliding across his features like waves on the sand.

“We’re standing there and Nuzo suddenly laughs. But it’s all wrong, y’know? Like…fragile,” he glanced over at them once more, this time not looking away. “And he says real quiet, like he was afraid the words would kick off the storm or something…he says, _they turned us into weapons, and then they told us to find peace_.”

Rick swallowed at that, feeling his skin ripple in reaction, goosebumps raising even in the heat of the morning.

“I never forgot that,” Thomas continued. “All those missions, all that time in that cave, it stayed with me.” His brows pulled together again as his eyes seemed to fade, his gaze pulling away, off to the middle distance. “And it’s all I could think about when Hannah…,” he winced as he said her name, “when she pointed that gun at me. That she’d been turned into a weapon. But there wasn’t going to be any peace.”

“Not for her,” Rick agreed quietly. “But there can be for us.”

Thomas looked at him then with such a yearning in his eyes it almost made Rick catch his breath. He could see Thomas wanted it to be true—they all did. But he wasn’t convinced it was possible after everything they’d seen.

“Even without Nuzo,” Rick concluded.

“We were a team before we were friends,” TC said. “We were friends before we were family. And none of that stopped when we lost Nuzo.”

“I know,” Thomas said softly. He looked over at Rick. “It’s how come I ended up at the Club last night,” he said, as though realizing the truth for himself in that moment. “You guys…you’re my family.”

“You bleed,” Rick said, stepping forward to rest a hand on each of their shoulders, creating a bridge between them, “we bleed.”

Thomas pulled up the corner of his mouth in a sad smile, his fingers still on the top of the headstone. TC placed his hand on the stone as well, then dropped his arm across Rick’s shoulder, bringing them in close.

“No more dealing with nightmares and shit on your own, T.M.,” TC ordered.

“Yeah, okay,” Thomas replied.

“And we come back here more often,” Rick declared. “For Nuzo.”

“For Nuzo,” TC nodded.

Thomas smiled. After a moment, he stepped back, finally lifting his hand from the top of the headstone. Rick felt as though a spell had lifted, releasing them from a grip of memory.

“So, you guys hungry or what?”

* * *

_Rick  
Saturday, 9:00am_

“You’re coming to the luau later, yes? _Yes_?” Rick asked as TC dropped them back at the Club two hours later.

Thomas climbed behind the wheel of the Ferrari. “Luau?”

Rick sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically. “I swear you need a minder. We’re closing early, remember? Luau for the staff out back by the lagoon?”

Thomas and TC grinned, exchanging a glance. “We’re not staff, man.”

Rick huffed waving his words away. “You’re exceptions. Be there. I’ll be personally offended if I don’t see you. Bring Higgy.”

Thomas was laughing at him. “Yeah, okay, I’ll be there,” he promised. “But no Higgy—she’s got that…guy here for the weekend.”

“ _Guy_?” TC and Rick echoed in unison.

Thomas revved the engine, lifting his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “All I know is he’s British and he makes her smile.”

TC bounced his eyebrows. “To hell with the luau, let’s head over to Robin’s!”

Thomas shook his head and put the car in gear. “No way, man. I promised I’d give her space and I’m keeping that promise. I’ll be back at…?”

“Seven,” Rick supplied, pointing at him as he backed out of the lot. “Don’t let me down!”

Thomas waved as he drove off and TC bumped Rick’s shoulder. “Isn’t the luau at eight?”

“Yes,” Rick glanced at him. “But when in his life has Thomas Magnum been on time for anything that wasn’t an order or an Op?”

“Good point,” TC nodded, tossing him a lazy salute as he climbed back into his van.

Rick waved him off, then headed back inside to start the world’s fastest inventory. At least, that was his intention. As he walked into the storeroom, however, he found himself gravitating toward the back room and without preamble, fell face-first onto the cot.

He was asleep the moment he wrapped his arms around the now-cool pillow.

When he woke, it was to the smell of roasting meat and the thump of a base. Climbing to his feet he yawned loudly, feeling like a new man after several hours sleep. Grimacing, he sniffed the inside collar of his shirt.

Didn’t smell like a new man, though.

The King Kamehameha Club wasn’t his home away from home for just any old reason. Rick ducked into the manager’s office and used the shower and toiletries kept there, slipping on a spare shirt and shorts before heading out back to oversee the last of the luau prep.

TC had already arrived and was laughing it up with the team at the roasting pit. Bare-bulbed lights were strung between the back of the club and two large banyan trees that led right out to the water. The gentle night tossed the waves against the small beach with the rhythm of an old man in a rocking chair. The DJ had set up an elevated stand to keep the equipment off the sand and the rest of the staff was assembling tables and folding chairs on the far side of the roasting pit.

Rick waved at TC and started to head toward him when he was stopped by a whiff of Red perfume and a flash of tanned skin.

“Cate,” he greeted with an appreciative grin.

Cate Andrews had been a bartender at the club since before Rick had arrived on the island. Always one to appreciate the appeal of an attractive woman, this one was a bit of an enigma to him—not the least bit because she was basically in lust with Thomas. Though she’d yet to openly admit it.

Rick liked her because she laughed freely—head tipped back, mouth open, eyes dancing. And she made a mean cocktail. Tonight, her dark hair was trailing down her back and she wore a black bikini top and jean shorts. She held two beers in one hand and thrust them toward Rick as she planted herself in his path. He took one of the bottles and tilted his head, anticipating her question.

“I see TC is here,” she commented, holding her empty hand out for his bottle cap as he twisted it open.

“I see that, too,” Rick teased.

“Can I assume that means Magnum will be joining as well?”

“You can assume anything you want,” Rick grinned. “It’s a free country.”

Cate narrowed her eyes. “Want to know who finished your inventory today?”

Rick blew out a breath. He had to give her that one. Plus…maybe offering Thomas a different kind of change in scenery was just the thing his friend might need to help him move forward.

“He’ll be here around eight,” he told her. “But, uh…go easy on him, okay?”

“What do you think I’m going to do, jump his bones right here on the beach?” Cate lifted an eyebrow, her green eyes sparking with mischief.

“Hey, if that’s your game, you don’t have to wait for Thomas,” Rick gave her a half-grin and bounced his eyebrows suggestively.

She pushed against his chest. “Sorry, bud. Not my type.”

As she walked away, Rick sputtered, “Not your…I’m everybody’s type!”

One of the security guards walked past him, nodding a greeting.

“I’m everybody’s type, right?” Rick asked him.

“ _Kauka i ka lā_ ,” the man replied over his shoulder.

TC stepped up beside him. “What did he say?”

Rick shook his head with a slightly dramatic sigh. “He said it depends on the day.”

TC chuckled and bumped Rick’s shoulder, then led him to the water’s edge where several more of the Club’s employees were playing beach volleyball. True to form, Thomas showed up just before eight. Rick caught sight of his Tigers cap first and waved him over toward the roasting pit. TC handed him a beer and for a while, the three men lost themselves in the food, beer, and music.

The night was soft around the edges. Or maybe that was the freely flowing beer. Rick felt a buoyancy that had been missing since the moment he got the call from Thomas saying Hannah was on the island. The hand that had been hovering at his throat seemed to vanish, a fresh breath in its wake.

For one night he allowed himself to believe they’d made it to the other side of whatever their latest test had been.

Cate wandered over after about an hour and pulled the same two beers-one hand move, turning her green eyes on Thomas. For a few minutes Rick didn’t think Thomas was ready to play ball, but then he let Cate pull him out to where several others were dancing, his eyes on the slim woman stepping well inside his personal bubble.

TC bumped Rick’s arm with his elbow. “Think our boy’s covered for the night?”

“Maybe he’ll actually get some sleep,” Rick mused, watching as Cate draped her arms around Thomas’ neck and his friend let his hands rest on her slim waist.

“I don’t think _sleep_ is on her agenda,” TC chuckled.

Rick turned back to his group and lost track of time—and of beers. Before he knew it, the fire pit was down to coals, the music had shifted to just one guy and his guitar, and TC was tugging his arm across his shoulders as he led him to the Island Hoppers van.

“We done?” Rick asked, stumbling to keep up with TC’s longer strides.

“ _You_ are,” TC commented.

Rick looked around at the remaining partiers. “Where’d Tommy go?”

“He left with Cate a few hours ago,” TC revealed, opening the van door.

Rick eyed the step up into the passenger seat. That looked like a really tall climb. “I can just stay here,” he offered.

TC shook his head. “Not two nights in a row, man,” he declared, gripping Rick at the shoulder and waist. “You’re going home and you’re getting some actual shut-eye.”

“You’re the boss,” Rick yawned, allowing himself to be manhandled into the van and then, after TC apparently teleported them across town, again into his house.

He didn’t remember TC dropping him into his bed or removing his shoes.

The next thing he knew, someone was pounding on his door and an obnoxious amount of sunlight was pouring through his window. He felt gritty and dense, like he’d been rolled in salt and set out in the sun to dry. Digging the heel of his hand into his eye, he sat up with a low groan, smacking his lips against the taste of stale beer and…oh, good _God_ , did someone let him drink tequila last night?

The pounding intensified. It was getting hard to determine what was the door and what was his head. He squinted at the digital readout of red numbers on his bedside clock. 8:02am. He had to think about what day it was.

Sunday, right?

When the pounding on the door made the window rattle, Rich groaned, pressing his fingers to his temples.

“Hold your damn horses,” Rick growled. “I’m coming already.”

He stumbled to his feet, pressing a hand flat against the wall as the world tilted dangerously. After a few slow, deep breathes and a hard-fought battle against a revisit of whatever he’d eaten the night before, he was able to stumble forward through his small kitchen and to the door, where a blurry figure was silhouetted on the other side of curtained windows.

“I swear, Thomas, if that’s you I’m going to hit you again,” he grumbled as he reached for the doorknob. Blinking in surprise he stared bleary-eyed at the woman standing on his narrow porch. “Cate?”

“Hi,” she huffed. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair pulled up into a knot on the top of her head and she held something in her hands.

“How do you know where I live?” Rick asked, narrowing his eyes at the ludicrous sunlight. Why the hell did it have to be so bright anyway?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cate muttered, pushing past him, and heading inside. “Everyone knows where you live.”

Rick closed one eye, watching her flop onto the couch. “Come on in,” he said needlessly, swinging the door closed. “Coffee?”

“There is something seriously wrong with you,” Cate declared, crossing her arms, and slinging one leg over the other.

“So, that’s a no to coffee then?” Rick shuffled to the kitchen, twisting the blinds closed before pulling out the coffee filters.

“You let me think there was a chance with Magnum,” Cate accused, standing up and heading toward the kitchen. It was only then Rick registered that the thing she held in her hand was Thomas’ Tigers hat.

“How’d you get that?” Rick asked, scooping coffee into the filter with one hand as he reached for the hat with his other.

“He left it at my place,” Cate replied. “I see him wearing it all the time, so I figured I’d bring it back to you.”

Rick nodded, plucking the hat from her fingers, and setting it on top of the fridge where it would be safe. “Thanks,” he said. The coffee began to percolate, liquid gold filling the glass carafe as the heady aroma slipped around the small kitchen, whispering hope that he may very well survive the morning. “And to be fair, I never said you had a chance with Thomas. You _assumed_.”

“You didn’t bother to tell me that he’s emotionally distant,” Cate grumbled.

Rick grabbed two mugs from his cupboard. “Thomas?” he scoffed, eyes on the rapidly dripping coffee, waiting for the moment it was safe to swap the carafe for his mug. “He’s probably one of the most emotionally _approachable_ people out there. Y’know. For a SEAL.”

“Well, then it’s me,” Cate lamented.

Rick sighed, switching one mug for the other before replacing the carafe to finish filling up. “Okay, talk to me. From the beginning.”

He leaned on the counter and blinked at her, breathing in the rich, life-affirming scent from his mug. There was literally nothing in the world better than coffee. He’d stake his reputation as a sniper on that statement.

“It was going great,” she pouted. “He seemed into it. And holy shit is he a great kisser—”

“Okay, let’s not…how about you fast-forward a bit,” Rick rotated his finger in a circle.

“We headed back to my place,” Cate sat back, clicking her manicured nails against the counter until Rick had to flatten his palm against her fingers before even something as powerful as coffee wasn’t able to prevent the repetitive sound opening his skull by the sheer force of annoyance.

“And things were…moving in a positive…y’know, direction,” she stumbled, and Rick nodded encouragingly. “And then out of the blue he just like…shut down and bailed on me.”

“What happened right before he shut down?” Rick asked, sipping from his mug, and honestly trying to determine if he should worry about Thomas or look for an opening with Cate.

Cate exhaled slowly, thinking. “I asked about his scar,” she said.

That sobered him up a bit. He stepped back. “Which one?”

Cate frowned. “Damn, how many does he have?”

“A lot,” Rick returned.

“It was a big pink one, here,” she pointed to her shoulder.

Rick sighed. Had it been the wound on his flank, Thomas might have been able to shrug his way out of that explanation, but the shoulder… _Hannah_ …it was all too new.

“It’s not you, Cate,” Rick said, rubbing the back of his neck, “and he’s not emotionally distant. He’s just…been through a lot.” He eyed her over the rim of his mug. “I _did_ tell you to go easy on him.”

“Yeah, well…,” she sighed, pushing away from the counter. “Guess I’m not put together to deal with that much baggage.”

“Guess you’re not,” Rick returned, disinclined to defend his friend to someone who couldn’t handle the truth anyway. “Thanks for returning his hat.”

Cate drew her head back. “That’s it? That’s all I get?”

Rick lifted a shoulder. “Unless you’re looking for me to close the deal for you?”

Cate almost snarled. He blinked blandly back at her. It wasn’t _that_ bad of a suggestion.

“Yeah, no thanks,” she huffed, then turned, and stomped to the door, slamming it closed behind her.

Rick winced at the sound. Good. He’d probably throw up all over her anyway at this rate. Finishing his coffee—and then downing the mug he’d poured Cate for good measure—he shuffled back to his room and dug his phone out of the blankets from where it had fallen from his pocket when TC put him to bed the night before.

He had two texts from TC and one voicemail from Thomas—the man was perpetually anti-text.

He scanned TC’s texts first—nothing major, just making sure he was alive and that he drank plenty of water today.

“Thanks, Mom,” he muttered, hitting the voicemail button.

_"Hey, man. Uh, look…sorry about the girl. She seemed real nice, I just…it wasn’t happening. I know you were trying to get my mind off of…of things, but. Don’t think I’m built like that…."_

“You can say that again, buddy.”

_"…I got an idea for how I can shake off some of these shadows, though. Sure-fire way to infuse sunlight…and maybe wear me out enough to get some damn sleep. Just gotta…head home for a bit. Oh, and uh…I think I left my lucky hat at Cate’s place. Think maybe you can get it for me? Tigers can’t win if I’m not wearing that hat, y’know."_

“Head home?” Rick pulled the phone away and stared it. “What, like…to Detroit?”

His thumb hovered over this contact list, thinking first to call Thomas and ask him what the hell, then to text TC and suggest they head over to Robin’s Nest to get a visual check on Thomas. But then his eyes caught on his still-swollen knuckles, the memory of Thomas on the floor next to the bar staring up at him in confused bewilderment fresh in his mind.

And he set the phone down on the bed.

Pressing his fists into the mattress, he hung his head low, pulling in a slow breath. Some people were like magnets, and Rick was drawn to them. But sometimes the magnet needed to flip over or risk repelling the only thing that could anchor it.

As he stepped into the shower, letting the hot water chase the cobwebs away, Rick knew that Thomas needed a flip.

He just wasn’t sure he was the right person to do it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_Thomas  
Saturday, 11:17 pm_

When Cate suggested they leave the luau, Thomas had paused, searching for Rick and TC. He sighted them over by the fire pit, laughing with two of the security guards and, for the first time in weeks, looking genuinely _happy_. It made him catch his breath.

“So, what about it?” Cate asked, linking her fingers with his. She tugged on his arm slightly to draw his attention back to her. “Want to get out of here?”

He felt his mouth reflexively curl up in a smile in response to her grin. Glancing back over his shoulder, he made his decision.

“Yeah, let’s go,” he nodded. “I’ll drive.”

She laughed, pulling him with her as she headed toward the side gate. “We’ll both drive,” she said, tossing a coy look at him. “I may not have a Ferrari, but I’m not leaving my wheels here overnight.”

“Fair enough,” he nodded, following her to the parking lot, then letting her lead them away from the club.

The night air slipping over the windshield and into the open top of the Ferrari cooled his heated skin and slipped fingers of doubt and reason into his thoughts.

“What the hell are you doing, Magnum?” he muttered out loud as he kept his eyes on her taillights, following her car around a curve.

This wasn’t his style. He wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. He was an all or nothing, long-haul relationship guy.

“Yeah, and look where that got you,” he grumbled. “Jesus, man, it’s just sex.”

It was just sex. It might even do him some good. Get his mind off—

“No. Stop.” He met his own eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Shut it down, now.”

It was good that Cate lived close to the Club; too much time alone with his thoughts and Thomas would have just headed back to Robin’s Nest. He followed her car down the short, gravel driveway, shut off the engine, and climbed out of the Ferrari.

Cate’s keys jingled in her grip as she opened her front door, leading him into a small living room that smelled of lemon cleaner and lavender candles. She turned on a silver-shaded lamp and dropped the keys into what looked like an empty ashtray. Thomas stood awkwardly in front of the closed door, eyes habitually darting to the darkened corners, checking the windows, the doorways.

“You want a drink?” Cate offered, turning around to face him, her hands resting on her hipbones.

Thomas shook his head. “I’m good,” he said.

She smiled. “I think I’ll be the judge of that,” she said softly, stepping close and wrapping her arms around his neck. She deftly slid his hat from his head and gently carded manicured nails through his short hair, making goose flesh rise along his neck.

The corner of his mouth curved up, his body responding to her proximity and boldness. He wrapped his hands around her waist, fingers pressing against her warm skin into the curve of her spine as her long hair tickled his wrists. Her lips hovered close to his mouth without touching him.

“You okay with this?” he found himself asking.

She nodded and pressed closer until he felt the magnetic pull of her mouth. Her lips were soft, the slide of her tongue both foreign and welcome. He breathed out against her cheek and angled his head to deepen the kiss, moving his hand to the back of her head to brace the curve of her neck against his height.

Pulling away to grab a breath he looked at her and for a startling moment saw almond-shaped, dark brown eyes in place of pale green. He gasped and she grinned, missing his shock as she turned to drag him by the hand through the small living room and down a short, darkened hallway to what was clearly her bedroom. Thomas stumbled inside, his brain a confused tangle of memory, emotion, and libido.

The room was dimly lit by a skylight, the slim light of a waxing moon turning everything a pearled gray. Cate stepped in front of him and kicked off her sandals, reaching for the buttons of his shirt. He let her pull his shirt from his shoulders, peering at her eyes.

Green. Definitely green.

Not brown. With sharp cheekbones.

“You okay?” Cate asked.

Instead of answering her, Thomas pulled her close and captured her mouth, sweeping his tongue through her parted lips, relishing the feeling of her body arching against his. He kept his hand on her lower back and moved them with practiced precision to the bed, his eyes firmly closed as he focused on the feel of her hands on his skin, the smell of her perfume, the softness of her hair.

And then her fingers brushed across his left shoulder, moving toward his chest. He drew back as her touch lingered at his still-healing scar.

_Struggling for the knife…his head hitting the dash…a punch to the throat…the sensation of falling before he grabbed the seat belt…a suspended moment in time where she pointed the gun at him…._

“…like it hurt.”

Thomas pushed upright to a near-plank position, pulling away from Cate so that their skin wasn’t touching.

“What?” he asked, suddenly breathless. “What was that?”

“I said that looks like it hurt,” Cate repeated scooting up a bit in the bed as Thomas sat back on his heels, trying to get his breath under control. “Hey, you okay?”

_The look of regret that flashed through her brown eyes before pain exploded in his chest and he was falling, crashing, rolling, the road unforgiving as the truck careened away…._

“No, I…uh…,” Thomas scrambled from the bed, casting about for his shirt. Finding it, he turned to hold out a hand to her in instinctive apology. “I’m sorry, I just…I remembered I gotta take care of something.”

“At midnight?” Cate exclaimed, sitting up all the way, her kiss-swollen lips turned down in a disbelieving pout.

“Yeah, I know,” Thomas tried for a disarming smile but was pretty sure he only made it to a grimace. “Life of a Private Investigator.”

“But…what—?” Cate raised up on her knees, shoving her tousled hair away from her face. “I thought we were having a good—”

“Really, gotta go,” Thomas backed all the way from the room, turned, and headed for the front door without bothering to put his shirt on. “G’night!”

He stepped out into the cool of the night, drawing a shaking breath, and shoved his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned. Without bothering to open the door of the Ferrari, he jumped inside, slid into place behind the wheel, and roared the engine, backing out of the driveway with a spray of gravel.

As he pulled onto the road, he rubbed a hand over the top of his sweaty hair.

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” he berated himself.

TC and Rick were right—he _had to_ let this go. He was letting Hannah ruin his life. _Again_. And for what? It wasn’t like he meant anything to her anymore. If he ever had.

He drove home on pure instinct. When he suddenly found himself paused at the gate to Robin’s estate punching in the access code, he had to wonder if he’d hit any red lights along the way; he remembered nothing of the drive. Parking the Ferrari in the corral, he tossed a quick look up at the main house and saw that there was still a light on in the primary living room.

Glancing at his watch he saw that it was half-past midnight—late, even for Higgins. For a moment he considered wandering up to the house for a drink and maybe some bracing British commentary about his irresponsibility.

But then he heard her laugh. It cut through him, that sound. Like a memory of what joy felt like.

He couldn’t intrude on that; whatever made her sound so light…he wasn’t going to take that away with this weight. Casting a furtive glance around for any sign of the two demon dogs, he wandered across the stone driveway to the path that lead to the guest house. He started to head to his kitchen but paused.

He didn’t want anything more to drink. He wasn’t hungry.

He was…restless.

Wandering through his darkened house, he ended up on the lanai, the moon casting a pale glow on the path of grass that lead down to the beach. He let the gentle sigh of the night wind dry the sweat from his forehead and back of his neck, closing his eyes and listening for the sound of the waves. They were far enough away he had to add his own memories of sound.

_“They turned us into weapons…and then told us to find peace.”_

He blinked his eyes open, hearing Nuzo’s voice as clearly as if he were standing next to him.

“I was really good at the first one,” he said quietly into the night, “but I think I’m failing at the second.”

There were times when acting as if nothing bothered him took every ounce of energy he possessed.

It was one reason he was so grateful to Robin for the job, the house, all of it. He didn’t have to own anything, be responsible for anything—only himself and whatever he chose to take on. It was the only way he was going to survive a life of peace and safety.

Part of him suspected Robin was quite aware of that fact; the author couched the generosity by claiming it was in repayment for inspiring the _White Knight_ series. But Thomas knew the man saw more than he let on; he knew Thomas would have crumbled under the weight of the expectations of real life. Their time in the Korengal Valley had hollowed him out, turned his bones brittle.

This borrowed peace was a scaffolding that kept him together.

Shaking himself slightly, he dragged in a breath. He wanted to move, to swim for miles, to drive the car way too fast and simply find that moment when his body felt weightless and decisions were taken from his hands. As soon as the thought hit him, he put his face in his hands, hearing his mother’s voice in his head.

“ _Que, no tienes abuela?”_

It hadn’t mattered that his grandmother died when he was young; the idiom was a favorite of his mother's when she wanted him to think carefully about anything she saw as reckless behavior.

The woman had been indomitable. Caring and compassionate, but strong in a way he could never be. She’d raised him to love a father he could barely remember, to love a country that had so often treated them like second-class citizens, to be loyal, forthright, and honest. He’d simply followed her example.

The fact that he hadn’t been there when she’d died struck a pain in him even now. When he’d been strong enough after they’d come home, he’d paddled out far enough from shore the mountains had appeared small and tossed a lei on the ocean in memory of his mother.

With a sigh Thomas started to turn around and head back inside when his eyes caught on the borrowed outrigger. He’d taken to keeping it on the lanai as returning it to the main storage up at Robin’s house every day just became a hassle. And it wasn’t as if Higgins ever used it.

The sight of it triggered an idea.

Running the tips of his fingers down the smooth fiberglass, he thought of the sea. In the months of training to be a SEAL, the sea went from being a terror to a torturer to a place of peace. A _home_. He was comfortable on the water. He knew it’s idiosyncrasies, it’s way of being predictably unpredictable.

What he really needed to do was…go home.

“What would Pop have done, Mama?” he whispered, his eyes still on the surf ski. “I know what _you_ would have done. Anytime I was sad—or bored—you’d put your hands on your hips, give me that look that I knew I couldn’t escape, and say _pues ponte a limpiar_.” He smiled at the memory, flattening his hand against the outrigger, his palm cooling at the touch.

“But what about him? He was always such a…a _hero_ in my memory. Nothing bothered him. Nothing brought him down,” Thomas murmured. “Would he have found an escape? Or just…met this head on?”

When Thomas was a teenager, running carelessly through life, his mother hadn’t simply worried about him, she’d greeted him at the door when he was late for curfew and clutched him to her saying she had been waiting for him _se queda con el Jesús en la boca._ Once, when he was around fourteen, he’d pushed back shouting that his father wouldn’t have worried so much, wouldn’t have smothered him like this.

She’d replied, _“Your father worries now, watching over you. He knew you’d follow in his footsteps from the moment he laid eyes on you. He knew you’d bring great honor to our name, but that it would cause you great pain. He knew it, and he blessed it. And you will_ not _mock that now.”_

Thomas smiled at the memory. “I’m not mocking, Mama,” he whispered.

Decision made, he headed back into the house with an idea to get some sleep before dawn. But a full mind and a restless spirit kept him tossing and turning for several hours until he looked at his watch and saw that it was closing in on five in the morning.

“What the hell,” he sighed. “Not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

Grabbing a quick shower, he dressed in shorts and a gray T-shirt with the word Navy across the chest. He found his old shoes and searched his whole room for his Tigers cap before remembering that Cate had taken it off him at her house. Cursing under his breath, he found his phone and called Rick.

If there was one thing he’d learned since they survived the Korengal, it was to never simply disappear on these guys. The kind of worry that caused was nothing he wanted to lay on their shoulders. The phone rang three times before Rick’s voicemail picked up.

“Hey, man,” he started. “Uh, look…sorry about the girl. She seemed real nice, I just…it wasn’t happening. I know you were trying to get my mind off of…of things, but. Don’t think I’m built like that….”

He rubbed his hand over the top of his head, uncomfortable with the confession, even to a recording.

“I got an idea for how I can shake off some of these shadows, though. Sure-fire way to infuse sunlight…and maybe wear me out enough to get some damn sleep. Just gotta…head home for a bit.” He started to hang up when a thought struck him. “Oh, and uh…I think I left my lucky hat at Cate’s place. Think maybe you can get it for me? Tigers can’t win if I’m not wearing that hat, y’know.”

Grinning, he shoved his phone into the pocket of his cargo shorts, grabbed a bottle of water and his sunscreen, then went out on the lanai to fetch the outrigger and paddle. The sun was rising behind him, the new light stretching arms around the horizon, turning the sky pink and the sea gold. Thomas dragged the surf ski to the water’s edge, a sound bringing his head up quickly.

From across the broad expanse of lawn, he saw Zeus and Apollo headed his way, yips of warning—or delight, he could never really tell—echoing through the still morning.

“Aw, no you don’t,” Thomas muttered, wading into the shallow surf, and pushing the outrigger ahead of him. “Not today, devil dogs.”

He jogged a bit in the deepening water, then boosted himself into the single seat, settling his feet into the spaces and gripping the double-sided paddle. He glanced over his shoulder as the two Dobermans reached the water’s edge, whining that they missed their prey.

“Ha-ha!” he chortled back at them over his shoulder. “Gotta move faster!”

Grinning with unexpected joy at being back on the water—and avoiding getting his backside chomped on—Thomas paddled through the current, riding the tide as he made his way toward open water. He let his mind wander, feeling as though there was something inside of him that was slowly uncoiling with each thrust of the paddle into the surf, pushing him forward, cutting through the waves until he was gliding smoothly on the top of deep blue.

Shifting his body to help curve the outrigger a bit, he continued to push himself, relishing the feel of his muscles heating up with the exercise—his still-healing shoulder only slightly twinging with the extra effort. The day was still, the morning cool. The sun had finally crested the horizon and was spilling liquid gold across the island, tripping over palm trees and bushing beaches with calming warmth as it reached west toward the sea.

Thomas continued to paddle further from land, seeking that space where he hung suspended and free between the moorings of Earth’s gravity and the dizzying freedom of space. He’d halo-jumped once—not quite from the height Robin’s book claimed, but still, high enough—and it was at once terrifying and exhilarating. He wanted that near-weightless feeling once more, just to stop thinking for a moment.

After about an hour, he paused, crossing the paddle over the bow of the outrigger, and pulled his water bottle from a pocket in his cargo shorts. The sun was rising steadily and with it the temperature, even this far out. From where he now floated, the land was far enough away if he held his hand up to it, the beach was the size of his thumb. He watched a bird spin lazy circles in the sky near one of the green mountains, distractedly wondering what type of bird it was…when he suddenly realized there was a low roar underscoring the peaceful silence.

Frowning, Thomas capped the water bottle, setting it loose in the bottom of the outrigger and craned his head around, seeking the source of the sound. In moments he realized it was a large speedboat, and by the sound of it, several kids were out for a joyride. At first, he was irritated that his escape had been disrupted…but then he realized the boat was headed straight for him.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered, grabbing for the paddle, and digging into the water, trying to turn the outrigger away from the oncoming bow of the speedboat.

He got two good strokes in before the boat was on him, cutting to the side with echoing cries of alarm at just the last second. The wake from the speedboat swamped him, capsizing his surf ski, and sending him tumbling beneath the waves. He kicked to the surface, slapping his hand down on the water.

“Hey! Jackasses!”

He saw someone in the back of the boat wave and heard the diminishing sound of their laughter as the boat sped away.

“Freaking morons,” he grumbled, slapping the water again.

Dragging his hand down his face, Thomas looked around for the outrigger. The rolling waves buoyed him twice before he realized he couldn’t see it anywhere.

“Fuck,” he muttered, blowing out a wet sigh. “Higgy’s is going to kill me.”

He was going to have to swim.

Looking toward the beach he estimated he was around three miles from shore—which wasn’t a bad swim, really. And it would certainly get him nice and tired, which was the point after all. Taking a breath, he began to swim, stretching out his reach and timing his kicks for power rather than speed.

After about thirty minutes, he stopped swimming and looked around, dread filling his gut.

The Molokai Express was a current that ran between Oahu and Molokai, and it was strong enough that if one got caught in it without a boat—or a surf ski—they wouldn’t see land again until Alaska. By the looks of things, he wasn’t any closer to shore now than he had been when he started swimming thirty minutes ago.

“This is not good,” Thomas whispered to himself and started to swim again, this time kicking for speed. He kept count in his head of each stroke, knowing his speed down to the minute. After twenty minutes, he looked up.

Same damn place.

“Son of a bitch.”

Dread sat like a block of ice in his gut. There was no question about it: he was caught in the Molokai Express. His only hope now was that a boat passed by—preferably one not hellbent on plowing through anything in its path.

He checked his watch. It was just past eight in the morning. The boat tours of the island were just getting started. Someone should be by soon. He just had to tread water for a while. He could do that, no problem.

He was a SEAL after all. This was his home.

Leaning back against the roll of the water, he floated on his back for a bit until he caught his breath, then adjusted and began the slow back-and-forth kick, his arms sweeping to the sides to keep him upright and out of the water. He kept himself angled so that he could keep the sliver of land and the open water in his sights, marking his location like a human compass and listening for anything that sounded like a boat.

Twice a tourist plane flew over, but they were too high to see one small human bobbing on the surface of the ocean—still, he waved anyway. He started to play out previous mission parameters in his head to distract himself from the silence. After three hours he lay back again, giving his arms a rest, eyes on the cloudless blue sky.

“Rick and TC will find me,” he murmured to himself. “They have a freaking homing beacon—”

He stopped, straightening up in the water as a chilling thought shook through him. He didn’t tell Rick where he was going. He never even told Higgins he’d left.

No one knew he was missing.

* * *

_Rick  
Sunday, 10:14am. Approximately 3 hours in the ocean._

It had taken him longer than he’d ever willingly admit to get his act together and get back to the Club. When he arrived to clean up from the party the night before, TC was already there helping to fill in the roasting pit.

“What are you doing here, man?” Rick asked, grinning at his friend.

TC shrugged, tossing a shovelful of sand into the pit before leaning on the handle and looking over at Rick. “Hey, I played. Only fair I pay, right?”

Rick gave him a genuine smile. There weren’t many people in the world the quality of the man standing before him. He grabbed a shovel and began to match TC’s rhythm, filling in the pit.

“Any word from Thomas?” TC asked, bouncing his eyebrows.

Rick chuckled. “Our friend is not a one-night-stand kinda guy, Theodore Calvin.”

“I coulda told you that,” TC laughed. “He even get out the door?”

Rick paused in his shoveling and looked out across where others were picking up trash. “He did. Got all the way to her house before he bailed. Left his hat, though.”

TC shook his head. “You get all this from a phone call?”

“Nah,” Rick dumped a bunch of sand into the rapidly-filly pit. “Cate came by this morning to return his hat and complain. Got a voicemail from him.” He paused, frowning off into the distance. “He sounded fine…but said something weird.”

“Weird like what?”

Rick looked over at TC, watching as the big man patted down the sand to smooth out the covered pit. “Said he needed to go home for a while.”

“Home?” That brought TC’s head up. “What, like Detroit? Or Virginia Beach?”

Rick shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Think we should go check on him?”

Rick paused, thinking. “It was my first instinct, gotta be honest. But…he’s a grown man. And like I said, he sounded fine.”

“He’s _not_ fine, Orville,” TC scoffed. “You know that better than anyone.”

Rick lifted a shoulder. “I know, I just….”

TC narrowed his eyes. “You’re still feeling guilty about belting him.”

“Maybe,” Rick sighed, grabbing TC’s shovel and carrying it over to the shed built against the side of the Club. “He didn’t seem upset by it, though.”

“That’s ‘cause he ain’t. If his jaw isn’t bruised—”

“Which you know it is.”

“—then he’s already forgotten all about it.”

“You’re probably right,” Rick replied, heading inside the club with TC. They paused as their eyes adjusted to the darkened interior. “Maybe we grab some shrimp bowls and take them over later.”

“Sure, then we wouldn’t be checking up on him,” TC nodded, “we’re just bringing lunch.”

Rick held up a fist for TC to bump.

“Hello!”

Both men brought their heads up at the call, Rick heading into the interior of the club.

“We’re closed, buddy,” he teased when he saw Detective Gordon Katsumoto lingering in the doorway.

Katsumoto paused, looking uncertain.

Rick chuckled. “I’m just messing with you; get in here.”

Katsumoto headed inside. “Magnum around?” he asked.

“Nope,” Rick shook his head. “You check his place?”

Katsumoto nodded. “No answer on his cell; called Higgins and she said he wasn’t down at the guest house.”

Rick and TC exchanged a glance.

“What’d he do this time?” TC asked. “Maybe he’s avoiding you.”

Katsumoto offered a half grin. “He didn’t do anything. This time,” he amended.

Rick headed to the coffee pot and scooped in fresh grounds. “You want?”

“To go,” Katsumoto nodded his thanks. “I’m just looking for some information on a case I’m working on.”

“Information from Thomas?” TC asked, surprise clear in his tone.

Katsumoto nodded. “Seems Magnum worked on this case back when he first opened his P.I. practice. I’m trying to close some loops. Could use his insight.”

At that Rick scoffed. “Insight, huh? Bet that hurt to say.”

TC leaned on the counter and Katsumoto had the grace to look chagrined as he glanced down at his hands. Rick poured the coffee into a to-go cup, clipping the lid on top and watching as a drip of coffee slid slowly across the top, spreading thin at the edge as he handed it over to Katsumoto. He felt a familiar heat build just beneath his skin, surprising in its suddenness.

“Look, I know I haven’t exactly been easy on Magnum,” Katsumoto started, “especially with everything that happened a couple of weeks back with the gold—”

“It’s not that, Gordie,” Rick interrupted him, leaning on the opposite end of the bar, and crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s that you just never really _see_ the man. Not for who he really is. I mean, sure the guy can’t manage to pay for a drink, but he can strategize like a tactical genius.”

Katsumoto chuckled. “Yeah, okay.”

“You mock, yet you need his insight.”

“On _a_ case,” Katsumoto stressed. “One. Not on life.”

Rick tilted his head, feeling a muscle in his jaw clench. “Reminds me of that old joke—you know, the one where a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. The doc says, why don’t you turn him in? They guy says, I would, but I need the eggs.”

TC huffed out a low chuckle. Katsumoto just stared at him.

“I gotta grab some things from the back,” Rick said. “Enjoy your coffee.”

He stepped through the doorway to the stockroom but left the door open. Leaning against the wall of the darkened hallway, he pressed his hands against the opposite side, hanging his head and drawing in a slow breath. He wasn’t sure why his temper was so close to the surface these days, but he’d been ready to punch Katsumoto a minute ago, the only thing stopping him being the common sense necessary to keep him out of jail.

“Tactical genius,” he heard Katsumoto mutter with scorn.

“You _do_ know Thomas was our Lieutenant, right?” TC asked, his low voice steady as always. “Got us out of more scrapes than I want to recall.”

“Magnum,” Katsumoto repeated. “ _Magnum_ was your Lieutenant.”

“This one mission I remember—we were in Kandahar, and they’d just started pairing Rick and I up with these two crazy SEALs. Rick was on Overwatch,” TC said, his voice slipping into a familiar cadence of memory.

“Thought he was a gunner on your helo,” Katsumoto asked, confused.

“My man has many skills,” TC replied. “And being a scary-accurate sniper is one of them.”

Listening from the hallway, Rick smiled. TC was never shy about compliments.

“Anyway, something went sideways—I was in an Apache, flying cover, waiting for the signal to come pick them up. I could hear everything but couldn’t see it.”

Rick closed his eyes. He remembered this Op. He remembered exactly when it went wrong. And he remembered owing his life to Thomas.

“One minute, they’re reporting in, everything’s going according to plan, the next minute Rick is telling them to get the fuck out of there,” TC’s voice wavered slightly. Katsumoto, to his credit, said nothing. Just let the man talk. “I heard Nuzo cussing at Thomas, asking him where he thought he was going. Heard Thomas calling me to land and get Nuzo. And I heard Rick….”

His nest had been compromised. He knew the men were caught in a kill box and he’d had just enough time to warn them before he was fighting for his life with two men, close quarters combat.

“It was just shy of a massacre,” TC recalled. “The sound of the gunfire, man. It was like every July 4th of your whole childhood rolled into fifteen minutes of chaos. I landed, but I couldn’t see anyone, could only hear shouting. Then I saw Nuzo.”

He’d been wounded, Rick remembered. The leg.

“He had blood just _covering_ one leg and he was shouting at me to go help Thomas, but I couldn’t leave the chopper. I got Nuzo inside and heard our commander demanding a report, but I had no idea where Thomas and Rick were.”

One man took a header out through the window during the fight, Rick remembered, but the other had a knife. He could still feel the blade digging into his shoulder. He’d known in that moment that was it; he was dead.

He hadn’t been strong enough to beat that guy, even fueled by the craziest surge of adrenaline he’d ever felt. He’d purposely positioned himself so that he could see his men, but where he wouldn’t be easy to reach. No one could be coming for him without encountering heavy firepower.

And then suddenly, Thomas had been there.

He’d come in from the roof using some kind of freaking Spiderman maneuver, launching himself through a window and taking out the guy trying to kill Rick with two feet planted in the man’s chest. He’d pulled Rick to his feet, a crazy grin on his face, grabbed up his rifle and took out every insurgent they contacted on the way down.

Rick barely remembered their desperate run to the helo; just Nuzo dragging him inside and TC whooping a delighted _how many lives you got, man_ as they took off.

“Turns out Rick had gotten cornered in the top floor of a building and was fighting off two insurgents. He had a stab wound to his shoulder and to hear him tell it, he was making his peace with God. But then Thomas shows up, takes them all out, and gets Rick to the helo,” the smile in TC’s voice slipped down the darkness of the hallway and pulled Rick upright. “We asked Thomas how he did it and he just said that he knew there would be too many for him to fight on the ground, so he went to the roof.”

“He…went to the roof?” Katsumoto asked.

“Our boy scaled the windows of the building next door like a ladder, jumped from one roof to the next like something out of Assassin’s Creed, and swung down through the window. From there, they had the tactical advantage of both higher ground and element of surprise. Bad guys thought there was only one wounded guy up there and got a face full of angry SEAL as a result.”

Rick grinned, remembering. That had been a good day—despite the wounds, despite the fear. That had been a good day.

“Pretty sure that was the day Rick decided to stick as close as a shadow to Thomas,” TC murmured. “And why you’re not going to get him to say a bad word about the guy, no matter how much you think T.M. may deserve it.”

Katsumoto was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying.”

“I hope so,” TC replied. “’Cause you’ll get a lot further with these guys if you do.”

Rick heard Katsumoto push the stool he’d been sitting on away from the counter. “If you hear from Magnum, have him get in touch with me.”

“Will do,” TC replied.

Rick waited until he heard the _clank_ of the main door shutting before he straightened up away from the wall.

“You can come on up here, now,” TC called. “I know you’re just hiding back there.”

Rick stepped forward into the light. “I wasn’t _hiding_.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was staying out of jail,” Rick elaborated. TC raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I get it. Thomas can come across as kind of…irresponsible, but we both know that’s just a front.”

“ _We_ know,” TC replied. “Not everyone else does, though.”

“Maybe they should,” Rick argued, crossing his arms over his chest.

TC shrugged and poured himself a mug of coffee. “Unless T.M. doesn’t want them to.”

“Why would he not want them to?”

“Same reason he puts up the front in the first place,” TC countered. “Protection.”

Rick sat with that for a full minute. He stared at the floor, listening to the sounds of a lazy Sunday outside the club, letting the aroma of the coffee infiltrate his senses, thinking about how differently he would have handled last night as compared to Thomas.

“Yeah, okay, maybe you’re right,” he sighed.

“’Course I’m right,” TC grinned. “You still want to stop by the Nest later?”

“May as well. Just ‘cause Higgins didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

“True,” TC nodded.

* * *

_Thomas  
Sunday, 12:02pm. Approximately 5 hours in the ocean. _

Okay, so there hadn’t been any boats all morning. That didn’t mean there _wouldn’t_ be any. He just had to keep swimming.

“I sound like that damn fish,” he muttered, lying back against the water and letting it buoy him.

His left shoulder had started to ache two hours ago, slowly turning into a painful burn that told him he was seriously damaging the still-hearing muscles with this constant motion.

It wasn’t as though he had a choice. In the ocean, movement equaled life. Just like with sharks.

“Nope, no. _No_ no no,” he shook his head, squinting against the too-brilliant reflection of the sunlight on the water. “Do _not_ think about sharks. There are no sharks.”

Even though…there were. This was the ocean.

He was currently bobbing on the surface of a million different sea creatures’ homes. And trying desperately not to think about all the ones that could end his existence if they should happen by.

About an hour ago he’d started to swim around trying to see if he could find his water bottle floating anywhere nearby. It had been loose in the outrigger. But all he managed to do was wear himself out and make himself thirstier.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” he quoted, rolling upright once more.

He splashed a handful on his over-heated face. He could feel his skin pulling tight with sunburn. His DNA and darker coloring had worked in his favor during BUD/s—especially compared to Nuzo’s fair complexion—but the sun was way too powerful. It always won.

“You got this, man,” he muttered to himself. “It’s only been five hours. This is nothing. Nothing.”

His eyes burned; he closed them tightly willing his natural tears to wash the saltwater from them and ease the burning sensation.

“I mean, this is nothing like Hell Week,” he tried to reassure himself, spitting out water as he bobbed in the waves. “That’s it…this is…this is just a really… _really_ intense Hell Week.”

His SEAL qualification training had gone on for nearly a year after Hell Week, but he would never forget the utter exhaustion he felt that week, how close he came to ringing out, how if it hadn’t been for the man next to him he would have sunk.

And that man next to him, more often than not, had been Sebastien Nuzo.

_“You think this is hard, try introducing your girl to your Italian mother!”_

Thomas let himself chuckle at the memory. Nuzo’s anecdotes had pulled him through some of the hardest physical challenges of his life. Kept him from freezing up, kept him focused.

When they’d first shipped out to Afghanistan, he remembered Nuzo looking at him as they lined up on the tarmac, eighty pounds of gear on their backs, as serious as he’d ever been, and saying, _“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells are all in you.”_

_“Dude, are you quote Joseph Campbell to me right now?”_

_“You gotta take this seriously, Tommy.”_

_“I_ am _taking it seriously.”_

 _“You over there grinning like a kid on his way to Disneyland,”_ Nuzo had countered. _“We’re about to enter the actual shit. Everything that happens now is real. And you can get real dead you don’t watch yourself.”_

 _“Nuz,”_ Thomas had replied, leveling his gaze on Nuzo’s worried blue eyes. _“We’ve been training for this for over a year. We know exactly what each other can and cannot take. I will not let you down.”_

 _“Not worried about you letting me down, kid,”_ Nuzo had practically growled. _“That’s never been an issue. Worried about you not watching out for yourself. This is not an adventure.”_

Thomas had grinned at him then. _“Hell yeah, it is. It’s the biggest adventure of our whole fucking lives, man!”_

SEAL training had been a great equalizer. Nothing had mattered but the will to succeed. And Thomas had made sure his will matched Nuzo’s right through it all, until they both walked onto that C-17 and into the next phase of their lives.

“Some adventure,” Thomas tipped his head back, trying to stretch his neck. “Only got through it ‘cause of you, man.” He rubbed at the back of his neck with his left hand, his stronger right the primary thing keeping him afloat.

His T-shirt protected his shoulders and chest, but he could feel the top of his head and his face were heating up well past what he knew was safe. Thinking through his options, he struggled out of his shirt, going under twice to maneuver his sore shoulder through the skin-tight cotton sleeves, and wrapped it around his head like a turban. Saltwater ran down his face and stung his eyes, but he felt his head rapidly cooling.

He would just have to alternate between his head and his shoulders until help came to avoid getting too burned. It wasn’t like when he was a kid and he got too much sun at the beach and his mom gave him ice packs and covered his sensitive skin with Aloe Vera lotion. He was on his own in this.

He could do it; he’d done it plenty of times before.

“You got this, man,” he coached himself. “Just a game of you against the sea.”

A memory flashed through his head, sudden and unbidden.

_“Let’s play the alphabet game, Tommy.”_

A gasp shook through him at the clarity of his father’s voice in his memory.

_“C’mon, each big road sign gets a new letter.”_

A road trip. Moving from Detroit to Virginia Beach. Mama asleep in the back, Pop driving, and Thomas barely able to see over the dashboard of the car from the front seat.

He could _almost_ see his dad, too. The short, dark hair, the crinkles around his eyes. They had been green, he remembered from pictures and his mother’s descriptions. He’d gotten his eyes from his mother, but his father’s eyes had been green.

His mother had carried forward his dad’s penchant for playing games to help pass the time, especially on longer car trips. He’d always thought it was her idea, but she said she’d picked it up from his father. She’d even taught him to play the game of _Clue_ in his head, narrowing down the suspects using memory and the process of elimination.

“Probably why I became a P.I.,” he gasped in amusement at the memory.

His father loving games. He’d forgotten all about that. The only true memory he’d ever really held onto about his dad was his love of the Tigers. Baseball had been the one memory he knew was solely his, not something his mother had created for him.

Glancing at his watch, he bit the inside of his lip to keep from groaning. 2:43pm. He’d been in the water for nearly eight hours.

“Eleven more and I beat my own record,” he huffed, transferring his T-shirt from his head to his shoulders.

He was cold, but it wasn’t quite as bad now as he knew it could get.

Hypothermia had set in within a few hours in those icy waters during Hell Week and the only thing that kept them centered were the chants of his teammates, calling to each other, and keeping in motion. Right now, his muscles were burning from exertion and exhaustion, his skin was tight from salt and sun, and he was thirsty and hungry…but he wasn’t cold enough for it to be dangerous. _Yet_.

Resting on his back for a moment, he pressed his right hand against the puckered scar on his left shoulder, the damaged muscles there throbbed beneath his palm.

“Dammit, Hannah.” He heard the moan in his ragged voice but didn’t care. It wasn’t as if anyone was around to hear it. “Why?”

He could still remember the day in the camps when he’d seen her through that crack in the stone wall, thinking she was there to negotiate their release, only to swallow the bitter betrayal that she was the reason they’d been captured. She was the reason they spent 18 months in various caves and in various holes. She was the reason for the beatings and the blood loss and the weakened immune systems and the nightmares and the broken lives he carried with him.

She was the reason Nuzo died.

Thomas felt a sob building in his throat, and he let himself sink beneath the surface for a moment, taking back his control. Coming up for air he grabbed the loose T-shirt before it was carried away by waves and wrapped it around his head once more.

“You got this, Magnum. You are a United States Naval Officer. A goddamn SEAL. You’ve _got_ this.”

He was just about to believe himself when he felt something bump his leg. Gasping, Thomas whipped his head around, searching the surface of the water for the one thing he hoped that bump was not: a shark.

Cresting the surface about ten feet away from him, the dorsal fin of a tiger shark began to circle him.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” he huffed, burning eyes skimming the water for the tail fin.

It was roughly eight feet in length and seemed to be alone, which might be the only thing that saved him. Fear wrapped cold fingers around his throat. Growing up in Virginia Beach, he’d spent a lot of his youth on Dam Neck Beach and had seen his fair share of sharks…always from the safety of the beach or a boat.

This was hardly his first in-person shark encounter. During his third phase of SEAL training, he had to complete a night swim out of San Clemente Island, just off the coast of San Diego. A breeding ground for great white sharks.

He’d been briefed on all species of sharks and told that if a shark began to circle his position, to stand his ground. Do not act afraid. Do not swim away. And if one charged him, punch it in the snout. He managed to make it through training without having to punch a shark—though, he’d had the occasional run-in since then.

But no number of encounters would be enough to make him impervious to the base instinct of terror that shook him at the sight of that fin.

He hadn’t been truly afraid up to this moment, but now, he was scared. It would be his luck to die within sight of land he couldn’t get to, eaten by an eight-foot tiger shark because some idiots went out for an early morning joy ride.

He felt his breathing pick up speed as the shark completed a full circle around him, sinking beneath the surface before coming up once more—this time close enough that Thomas could see a black, empty eye. He began to feel lightheaded; he had to get his breathing under control.

_“Let’s play the alphabet game, Tommy.”_

“Games,” Thomas whispered, holding his breath for a moment to try to slow it down. Turning in a slow circle he kept the shark in his sights. “I’m going to call you Herman,” he said to the shark, hearing the break in his voice. “You look like a Herman. No one with a name like _Herman_ could really ever eat a person.”

Herman seemed unaffected by his assertion and continued to circle. Thomas felt his heart climb his ribcage, thundering at the base of his throat.

“L-let’s play a little game, Herman,” Thomas called out. “You like h-hide and seek?”

He could hear the tremor in his voice, uncertain if it was from the cold or the fear. It was as if he were outside himself, listening in and assessing his resilience. And he was failing.

“I’ll close my eyes, and you hide,” Thomas said, swallowing hard as he closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them again only to see the fin still circling him. “C’mon, Herman, you’re being a jerk!”

Thomas continued to turn in a slow circle, dragging the T-shirt from his head carefully so that it didn’t land in the water, cause a splash, and catch Herman’s attention. Draping it across his shoulders, he called out, “Okay, look. I figure you really want to play but you’re just too shy to say so.”

Herman gave no indication one way or another, so Thomas carried on.

“I’m going to close my eyes again and count to ten and when I open my eyes…you’re going to be gone.”

His chin trembling as he slowly exhaled, Thomas closed his eyes, counting to ten out loud. Pressure in his head from dehydration and exposure built as he counted, sending a sharp pain behind his closed eyes. Breathing a quick, instinctive prayer when he reached ten, he opened his eyes to find the horizon empty.

He spun in a quick circle, looking desperately for any tell-tale sign of the shark, but saw nothing. Relief washed over him so strongly he nearly sank beneath the surface.

“Thanks, Pop,” he breathed, looking once more at his watch. It was just after four.

He had to admit it now: no tourist boat was coming by.

He dug out his useless cell phone from his cargo shorts and tried to catch the waning sunlight with it, thinking maybe one of the tourist planes would distinguish it from the rest of the brilliant sparkles on the water. After about ten minutes he realized it was hopeless.

“C’mon, guys,” he whispered. “Save my life.”

* * *

_Rick  
Sunday, 5:37pm. Approximately 11 hours in the ocean._

It was always amazing to him how quickly a day with no plans could disappear.

The minute TC had left the club earlier that day, two of Rick’s associates had come by for a conversation…and a favor. Rick kept his network of connections across the island stitched together with favors, so he knew he had to fulfill this one. Which took him all afternoon.

By the time he was picking up TC at Island Hoppers and swinging by Kamekona’s shrimp truck, it was well after five in the evening.

“Get the garlic one,” Rick hollered to TC as he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Pulling it out he looked up as TC called back, “One order or two?”

He held up two fingers, then turned away to answer the call. “Yeah?”

_“Rick, it’s Juliet.”_

“Hey, Higgy,” Rick grinned. “What can I do you for?”

Juliet paused at that, which was his intention, and he practically heard her eye roll as she continued.

_“Is Magnum with you?”_

“No ma’am,” Rick shook his head, frowning slightly. “Haven’t seen him all day.”

Juliet sighed, disgruntled. _“I’m taking my colleague out on Robin’s yacht tonight and I wanted him to help me with something on the engine he’d been working on earlier this week.”_

“Oh, an _overnight_ yacht cruise,” Rick commented, bouncing his eyebrows as TC approached with a plastic bag full of take-out. “That’s some colleague.”

_“For your information, we are going to watch the meteor shower—”_

“Sure, sure…on Robin’s yacht,” Rick grinning, enjoying the rise he got out of her with his teasing. “Nothing to bother you out there.”

 _“No light pollution out there, either,”_ Juliet replied tersely.

“Whatever you say, Higgy.”

 _“Look,”_ Juliet closed off, exasperation clear in her voice. _“If you hear from Magnum, have him call my cell.”_

“Will do,” Rick chuckled, pocketing his phone and opening the driver’s side door of his Porsche.

“That Higgins?” TC asked, climbing into the car and balancing the shrimp on his lap.

Rick nodded. “She was looking for Thomas.”

TC frowned. “That’s the second person today who hasn’t been able to track him down,” he observed. “You ever get him on his cell?”

Rick shook his head, pulling onto the highway and heading toward Robin’s Nest. “Probably a waste of our time going to Robin’s if Higgins can’t find him.”

“Head there anyway,” TC ordered. “Maybe he left a note or something.”

“That Higgins didn’t find?” Rick countered.

“Maybe it’s not something she’d pick up on,” TC suggested. “What was it he said to you again?”

“That he needed to go home for a while,” Rick muttered, turning on his headlights in the valley between two mountains as he headed to Robin’s estate.

It was going to get dark everywhere soon. Something about the pending night coupled with not knowing where Thomas was tightened Rick’s airways.

“Y’know, Thomas was from Detroit, but he grew up in Virginia Beach after his dad died,” TC remembered.

Rick nodded. “Our boy’s been tense lately…not sleeping…he ever say anything to you about ways he’d work through tension when he was home?”

TC shook his head. “He didn’t talk about his dad much, and his mom….”

“Yeah, that’s a tough subject all around,” Rick nodded, punching in the access code at the main gate of the estate.

“Nuzo mentioned once that Thomas grew up with a rowing machine in his basement,” TC mentioned as Rick shut off the car and they headed toward the guest house.

Rick paused to greet the dogs as they ran toward both men with excited yips. He followed TC into the guest house through the lanai, watching as the other man opened Thomas’ fridge to put the take-out shrimp inside. They shook their heads in unison at the empty state of their friend’s food supplies.

“The man lives on take-out and hope,” Rick muttered, wandering to the back and sticking his head into Thomas’ bedroom. Empty.

He thumbed through the mail on the coffee table when he came back into the room and glanced up as TC joined him from the bathroom.

“Nothing,” TC shrugged. “Not even a pad of paper to do that pencil trick for a secret code.”

Rick huffed a laugh. “You two are peas in a pod.”

They made their way back out to the lanai, watching as the sun touched the edge of the sea. Rick imagined he could almost hear it sizzling.

“What was that you said about the rowing machine?” he asked, his eyes skimming the shoreline of the small, private beach at the edge of Robin’s estate.

“Had one in his basement growing up,” TC said. “Nuz used to talk about how Thomas kept in shape by rowing and it gave him an advantage during training—since he was smaller than most of the other guys.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Rick nodded, his eyes tracking from the beach up to the pagoda Juliet used for yoga, then to the lanai where they stood. “Said Thomas was the strongest swimmer in their group—had a real powerful stroke.”

TC nodded, and Rick felt his eyes on him. “What are you thinking, brother?”

Rick turned in a slow circle, dread turning him cold. He tried to recall exactly what he was accustomed to seeing on the lanai, and then it struck him: the outrigger was missing. He moved toward where Thomas always propped it next to the double-headed paddle and pressed his fingers against the now-bare wall.

“He wasn’t talking about _home_ home,” Rick said, fear turning his voice hollow. He looked out toward the beach. “He was talking about… _home_. The sea.”

“What?” TC straightened from where he was leaning against a post, looking from Rick to the beach and back. “What makes you say that?”

“The outrigger is gone,” Rick said and watched TC’s face go slack with realization. “He hasn’t answered his phone all day. No one has seen him.”

“When did you get that voicemail?” TC demanded.

Rick pulled out his phone. “Just after five this morning.”

TC looked at his watch. “It’s almost 6:30,” he said, his voice clipped. “If you’re right, he’s been out there for over twelve hours, man.”

“I’ve got a very bad feeling about this,” Rick rubbed the back of his head.

“Play me the voicemail,” TC demanded.

Rick complied, homing in on one part in particular.

“ _…I got an idea for how I can shake off some of these shadows, though. Sure-fire way to infuse sunlight…and maybe wear me out enough to get some damn sleep. Just gotta…head home for a bit…”_

He stopped the recording. “He went out there, man. I’m sure of it.”

“Then why the hell isn’t he back by now?” TC demanded.

Rick stared at his friend, feeling true fear for the first time in a long, long time. “We gotta go after him.”

“It’s going to be dark soon,” TC pointed out. “How are we going to find one guy on an outrigger in the ocean in the dark?”

“We gotta do something!” Rick exclaimed, feeling panic rise in his chest. “Call the Coast Guard, the cops, something!”

TC tapped the air with the flat of his hands. “Okay, okay. Hang on. Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, his steady voice an instant balm to Rick’s frayed nerves. “Call Higgy—she’s out on the yacht, right? Have her start to look for him. I’ll call my buddy in the Coast Guard and see what he can tell us. Then we’ll take out the chopper and some big-assed flashlights.”

“Okay,” Rick nodded, trying to steady his breathing. “Yeah, okay.”

“We’ll find him,” TC stated.

“We’d better,” Rick muttered.

“We will,” TC asserted. “We didn’t survive all those months in a cave just to have him die out on the sea.”

“Nuzo died in the back of a stolen ambulance, man,” Rick pointed out. “We aren’t charmed. And Thomas…he’s a fucking bad luck magnet.”

TC rolled his neck. “I know. But we’ll find him. You hang onto that.”

Rick turned back towards the beach, eyes on the sea, as he called Juliet, hoping with everything in him that he was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> All of the Spanish in this chapter--and in all subsequent chapters where it appears--is thanks to coaching from some colleagues of mine in Costa Rica and the help of google translate. Those of you who are native Spanish speakers, try not to laugh too hard if it's way off. ;)
> 
> Also, Rick's recitation of the joke about the guy whose brother thinks he's a chicken is thanks to my sweet friend **pandi19**. Her shared tumblr posts have inspired many a hurt/comfort scene in my stories, and this shared joke was just too good not to be included in here.
> 
> Finally, the scene with Herman the shark and Magnum _willing_ it away by remembering games he played with his dad, that was a near-direct pull from the OG episode, "Home from the Sea." Of course, our Magnum's memories were different than Selleck's version, but if that read as familiar to any of you, that's why.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_Thomas  
Sunday, 7:34pm. Approximately 13 hours in the ocean_

He couldn’t stop shaking.

He felt the tremor in his numb hands as he moved them steadily through the water, the burn in his shoulder now a bone-deep ache that traveled up through his bruised jaw and settled into his temples. He felt it in his lips as he tried to keep his teeth from audibly chattering. He felt it in his gut, as though his ab muscles were protesting the constant need to keep his body upright. He felt it in his legs as they continued to kick slowly back and forth.

The last edges of the sun had stretched across the water minutes ago, turning the world to the faded denim of twilight, the blue of the ocean slipping to ink-black with the lack of sunlight. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky—a Cheshire Cat grin teasing him from the edge of night. Stars were beginning to show their ancient light, but it wasn’t enough…it was too dark for him to feel any sense of comfort.

Exhaling a shaking breath through chapped, blistered lips, Thomas pulled the T-shirt from its turban for the last time, trying to pull it over his head, but his movements were awkward and stilted and the wet cotton was cold against his sunburned skin, causing a violent shiver to shudder through him.

“Fuck it,” he whispered, releasing the shirt.

It wasn’t going to make that great of a difference at this point. The only thing that was going to keep him from dying of exposure, hypothermia, or drowning was being rescued.

He just had to stay alive long enough for them to find him.

Three hours ago he’d taken off his cargo shorts—wishing for his Navy-issue trousers—leaving him in only his boxer-briefs, and tied the legs into knots and swept the wet material through the air as hard as he could three times, filling them up, then twisted the waist together to create a float.

It had helped him rest for a while, but the air was slowly escaping.

“S-six more h-hours and you b-beat your record,” he rasped to himself, his voice rough, throat closed off by thirst.

Two hours earlier he’d screamed himself hoarse calling for help. It had been pointless, but as he’d seen the sun begin to sink, he’d grown desperate, and more than a little scared. Night swims were never his thing—in fact, he wasn’t a big fan of night in general. It had never held much in the way of positive messages for him. And lately, he couldn’t even ignore it through sleep.

In fact, he was starting to lose track of how long it had been since he’d gotten more than a couple of hours sleep in one burst. The cot in the Club’s stockroom was as close as he’d come and that was…what, two nights ago?

“Don’t think about it,” he admonished himself. “Think about anything else. Anythin—”

He slipped below the surface.

He hadn’t meant to, but his legs simply stopped kicking and he was suddenly swallowing saltwater. Pulling himself to the surface, he gagged, coughing up water, but then sank again, forgetting for a moment that he had to keep kicking.

It was a partnership between limbs.

Otherwise—

_Arms wrestled him into place, pinning him down on what felt like a piece of a wooden bleacher, bruising grips at his elbows and shoulders, a foul-smelling cloth over his face and then suddenly ice-cold water was flooding his senses._

_“Answer me!”_

Dari. They were shouting at him, demanding a response. He choked, coming to the surface of the ocean once more. Confused about where he was… _when_ he was.

“ _No se la pregunta_ ,” he gasped. What had they asked him? He couldn’t—

_Fingers wrapped around his throat. Someone punched him low in the gut, forcing and instinctive gasp and the water came again, a relentless torrent overpowering him, choking him, drowning him._

_“Answer me!”_

Thomas kicked against his captors, finally finding the surface of the ocean once more and gasped, coughing, choking, breathing. He blinked aware, looking around.

Open sea. The distant shoreline. _Hawaii_. Not Afghanistan. Not a cave. Not interrogation.

And he was alone.

“Holy shit,” he gasped.

It had felt so real. So…so _now_.

He shuddered. He had to stay alert, stay sharp; exhaustion was setting in. His body was disconnecting from unconscious thought; he needed to remind his legs and arms to move, his lungs to expand and contract, his heart to beat.

He had to stay alive.

 _“You stay alive, you hear me? You_ hear me _, Tommy? You don’t quit. That’s all you gotta do. Not quit.”_

_His side was on fire, his head spun, everything hurt…everything. He couldn’t stop shaking and every breath felt like his lungs were made of crushed glass._

_“Hey!”_

_Someone’s hands on his face, his chest, pressing against his side._

_“Hey, Thomas! Answer me, right the hell now. You_ hear me, _Lieutenant_ _Magnum!”_

_“Hear you,” he’d managed. Somehow. He managed to respond._

_“Hell yeah, you do.”_

_Nuzo. He could feel the man next to him. Feel them all close. He had to stay alive for them._

“We m-made it, Nuz,” Thomas gasped, keeping his head above water as twilight faded completely and the night engulfed him. “We m-made it.”

He recognized now that he probably had stage two hypothermia. Stage one was mild to strong shivering with numb hands—most people have experienced that at one point or another in their lives. Stage two was violent shivering with mild confusion. He’d spent much of Hell Week at stage two, the muscle spasms so strong they exhausted him for days afterwards. In stage three, the core body temperature dropped below ninety degrees and shivering stopped.

There is no stage four. Only death.

He cast about for his make-shift float and saw a darker shape drifting away from him off toward his right. He swam clumsily toward it, saying a quick prayer that it wasn’t something more ominous than his discarded clothing. When he found his shorts once more, he exhaled in relief and tried to re-make the float, crying out when he lifted his arms over his head.

Dropping his shorts, he clutched his left shoulder as a searing pain shot through the joint and stole his breath. Bursts of light danced behind his tightly closed eyelids and he felt a rush of nausea in reaction to the pain. He wanted to curl forward, rest his arm, but he could do neither. Not if he wanted to keep his head above water.

“Damn you, Hannah,” he gasped. He didn’t even want to think about the permanent damage he probably was doing to his shoulder.

Flailing for a moment, he managed to grab the loose cargo shorts with the tips of his fingers, curling his fingers into a fist. He lay back, floating for a moment, trying to catch his breath, starlight bright enough to dazzle his swollen eyes.

The sky looked like a toy he’d had as a kid…what had it been called? Lite Bright, that was it. Making glowing designs in black paper patterns.

Water covered his ears, muting out the harsh gasps of his own breath as he watched the stars, feeling for a moment as though he could see the actual point the Earth curved against space, turning the stars into a kaleidoscope of constellations and designs.

A sudden light jolted him. It streaked across the sky like an RPG, causing him to curl up and away, ducking his face into the water, hoping to avoid the concussive blast.

 _Stone and mortar peppered him, larger chunks_ thunking _against his back and shoulders, smaller ones pinging off his gear, but he stayed curled around his small charge, knowing that if he did not protect this one kid, everything else he’d done was for shit._

_The world stilled but his ears rang. He saw a man coming toward him and he pulled up his long gun, sighting shakily down the barrel before he saw the man waving him off. He was a friendly—too covered in dust and debris to be recognizable, but the uniform was American. He was saying something, but Thomas could only hear ringing; the world had been muted by the force of the blast._

_A hand on his shoulder brought his eyes up again._

_“You can let him go,” the man was saying. “He’s good. You can let him go.”_

_He looked down and saw a boy of about five years old clutched to his chest, tear tracks streaking his dirt-covered face._

_“Let him breathe, man.”_

Thomas jerked his face up out of the water, hands scrabbling at his torso, looking for the boy but finding only a loose pair of cargo shorts tangled in his grip. His ears were still numbed, though, and it took him several minutes to realize it was from floating on his back.

Water. It was _water_ in his ears. Not a concussion blast.

He had to stay present or he was going to literally drown in memories. What had they worked on with Rick, helping him hone his sniper skills?

“KIM,” Thomas rasped out loud, shaking his head in the dark, trying to rattle some of the water loose. He saw another star streak across the sky and looked up. Meteors. Not rockets. _Meteors_. “Keep In Memory.”

They’d replay training exercises with Rick, putting random items on a table or on the ground and cover them with a tarp, then pull it back and give him ten seconds to view it, before covering them back up and making him describe them—not name them, _describe_ them. A hunting knife became _a flat silver object about five inches in length with one sharp edge and a rubber handle big enough for a man’s fingers to wrap around completely_.

“A b-black curtain,” Thomas began looking at the sky. “A c-curtain with millions of…of b-bright holes. H-hanging over a large b-bowl of…of ink,” he continued letting his eyes drift down to the gently rolling sea.

He was so cold. _So_ cold.

His body shook violently even as he kept his arms and legs moving, keeping himself afloat. He couldn’t feel his feet; he could barely feel the motion of water against the hair on his legs. His teeth chattered loudly in his head, the sound a hollow echo in his water-logged ears.

He could handle the exhaustion. He had before. He’d handled worse exhaustion than this. Hell Week was worse than this.

He remembered it vividly.

Breakout on a Sunday night. M-60 machine guns blasting the air. Crawling out of the barracks with instructor screaming at them to _move_. Artillery simulators exploding on the asphalt-covered area the size of a small parking lot.

Fog—pumped by a machine or real, it didn’t matter; it was eerie and disorienting. Green chem lights lining the outer perimeter. Water hoses spraying them. The smell of cordite hanging heavy in the air. And loudspeakers blasting rock music.

“I’m…on the…Highway to Hell,” he rasped. “No stop signs, s-speed limit…nobody's gonna s-slow me down….”

* * *

_Rick  
Sunday, 9:54pm. Approximately 16 hours in the ocean_

“Jesus, answer the damn phone,” Rick practically growled, pacing the tarmac next to TC’s Island Hoppers chopper, running a hand repeatedly through his hair. He hadn’t been able to reach Juliet all night. “Where the hell is she?”

“Out on the yacht, man,” TC growled from inside his engine. “She told us. May not have reception out there.”

“You get that thing fixed yet?” Rick asked for what was probably the 400th time. TC shot him a look over the raised hood of the engine. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You do _not_ want me to half-ass this, Orville,” TC barked, “or the Coast Guard’ll be looking for our asses as well as Thomas.”

“They aren’t even looking for _his_ yet,” Rick snapped, his voice rising as he worked through his panic. He shoved a hand through his hair again. “I do not buy all this bullshit about checking other locations. The man is a Navy fucking SEAL for Christsake. He’s not some college idiot out for a joyride.”

Rick heard TC’s expressive sigh as he closed in on the engine compartment.

“It’s because he’s a SEAL they’re checking out other locations and not just…aimlessly sweeping the _entire fucking ocean_ for one outrigger and would you just _calm the hell down_?”

TC put the flat of his hand on Rick’s chest, easing him back and away.

“I will get this fixed, and we will get out there looking for him, but you need to breathe, brother,” TC coached him. “Have faith.”

“In what?” Rich shot back without thinking. “Pretty sure God left the building a few years ago, man.”

At that, TC stopped what he was doing and straightened up, knocking his shoulder against the hook light he’d attached to the underside of the hood to illuminate his work. He was nothing but a shadow to Rick—a slightly ominous, rather large shadow.

TC stepped toward him and Rick backed up, swallowing.

“Let me ask you something,” TC began. “You remember that day back in Kabul—about…maybe two years before the Valley—when the APC we hitched a ride on got cut off from the convoy outside the wire and we got word there were unfriendlies coming in from two different points?”

Rick nodded, confused.

“You stacked two Kevlar helmets up on the radio rack next to me to stop incoming bullets. _Helmets_ , man. Looking back, it’s crazy, right? But you _believed_ it, man. You believed it would help and _that_ kept you focused on what was important: surviving.”

Rick swallowed, reminding himself to take a breath. Listening.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s God, a picture of a girl back home, your dog tags, or…or a damn cap from your dad’s favorite baseball team—whatever it is, if it helps you believe, _that’s_ what matters. Doesn’t have to be rational, brother,” TC stepped forward once more, bringing his face out of the shadow of the chopper and into the light from the stars. “All that matters is you _believe_. You believe and you focus on what’s important _now_.”

Rick nodded shakily.

“You hearing me, man?”

“I’m hearing you,” Rick whispered.

TC shook his head. “Naw, I don’t think you are.”

“What do you want from me?” Rick shot back. “You want me to go find some goddamn Kevlar helmets?”

“Yeah, if that’ll help,” TC replied, spreading his hands out at his sides. “But you’re not going to do Thomas any good you go off all wound up like this. You got a target. Now, get focused!”

“Copy that,” Rick replied instinctively, his body practically snapping to attention at the bark in TC’s tone. He startled when his cell phone rang in his hand. Exchanging a nod with TC, he answered the call. “Higgins? _There_ you are.”

_“I did tell you that I was—”_

“Yeah, no time for that,” Rick waved a hand at the air while TC went back to making sure his chopper didn’t fall out of the sky. “We’ve got a problem and need your help.”

* * *

_Thomas  
Sunday, 11:43pm. Approximately 18 hours in the ocean_

He was fading. He could feel it happening. It was getting harder and harder to keep his head above water.

The cold had settled into his bones; his shivering so violent now he kept biting his tongue. He was tempted to just let himself sink, just for a moment, to give his arms a break. But the thought that he might not be able to surface once more shot through him and he felt his heart began to pound frantically.

It reminded him of the controlled panic he felt during drown proofing—hands and feet tied, dropped into twelve feet of water, forced to touch the bottom of the pool then grab a scuba mask with his teeth before he could surface. The inability to use his arms was worse than having his legs tied together.

Not unlike the leaden feeling of them now. It was a mental exercise in will that he kept them moving at all.

_“You do not quit.”_

“I’m trying, Nuz,” he gasped.

_“It’s the only thing you gotta do. Just stay alive.”_

“I’m trying, man.”

He couldn’t see his watch in the starlight; he wondered if he’d passed his personal record. Surely it had been eighteen hours by now. Maybe that was what fate was waiting for. To leave him alone and force him to learn perseverance, the will to overcome.

He’d learned that lesson once before. Maybe he needed the reminder.

_He dismounted the Armored Personnel Carrier he’d hitched a ride on heading to the FOB, grabbing their last RPG on his way. They’d been cut off and two of his company were wounded. He had one choice: stop the insurgents before they reached the convoy. He maneuvered around a building roughly fifty meters from his APC. He couldn’t clearly see the enemy, so he moved closer._

_Machine gun rounds began peppering the ground and building around him. The air was saturated with kicked-up dust. His plan worked: the enemy saw him as the easy target and started to focus their attention on him and away from the vehicles. He lined up his sights and fired the rocket, destroying one of the walls of the buildings protecting the insurgents, but drawing increased gunfire._

_He dropped the rocket tube and began to run, rounding the building, eager to return to the safety of the APC, and skidded to a stop._

_The vehicle was gone._

_He had only the pistol on his hip to fight off an unknown number of unfriendlies. No moment in all of SEAL training, no specialized Op, no battle before this moment had ever left him feeling so utterly and completely alone. It was a suffocating realization of how tenuous his tether to life truly was._

_A second later, he saw the convoy moving slowly forward, his APC a few hundred feet ahead. He ran—wearing over fifty pounds of body armor, sprinting faster than he had ever run in his life—catching up with the convoy. As he reached the truck, two sets of hands reached out for him, and two others lay down cover fire at the enemy positions. He grabbed the hands, allowing them to pull him to safety amidst a roar of approval from within the APC._

_“Didn’t know you had that kind of speed, Magnum!”_

_“Neither did I,” he’d gasped, letting the hands hold him secure as he worked to simply breathe._

He’d learned it before. He was capable of more than he ever knew. He could survive more than he imagined. He learned it before, and he knew it now.

“I g-got it,” he gasped. “Y-you c-can stop now. L-let ‘em come get me.” He looked up at the starlight. “ _Please_.”

A sound met his ears. An engine. A _familiar_ engine. After spending so many hours working on her, he knew the sound of the _T.R. Belle_ as well as the Ferrari. It was Robin’s yacht, all right. And it was headed right for him.

“Hey!” He tried to shout, the sound coming out as a strangled croak. “ _HEY!_ ” He repeated, trying to wave his arm, but unable to raise it very far above the surface of the water.

The yacht was headed toward him at a steady pace and for a moment Thomas contemplated trying to grab a window well or mooring rope, if it hung low enough. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to hang on for long and would most likely be cut to pieces by the engines.

“ _HELP!”_ He screamed as loud as he wrecked voice and saturated lungs would allow. “Please… _help_ ….”

The _T.R. Belle_ continued past, and he saw someone had turned on the fog light at the top of the cabin, spinning it against the surface of the ocean—on the wrong side of the boat. Thomas tasted blood on his lips as he called out once again, the blistered, burned skin cracking as he shouted.

“Don’t go…I can’t hang on if you go! I can’t….”

He sank below the surface, the water around him ink-black without the help of sunlight. He hung, suspended, lungs burning with the lack air, eyes burning from the salt. He felt his body convulse once, twice as it fought for breath. He closed his eyes.

_“Mi valiente chico….”_

His body jerked again, eyes opening in reaction. The surface was so far above him. So far.

_“It’s the only thing you gotta do. Just stay alive.”_

This wasn’t it. This wasn’t the end. Not yet. Not yet.

He kicked. Hard. Again and again until his head broke the surface and he dragged in a ragged lungful of air, body shivering violently.

“Please….”

* * *

_Rick  
Monday, 2:12am. Approximately 20 hours in the ocean_

“You didn’t see anything?”

Rick had his headset around his neck and was talking with Juliet through his cell, relaying messages back to TC as they followed the path of the shoreline starting out from Robin’s beach and heading west.

 _“Not yet,”_ Juliet replied, the concern in her voice palpable. _“I swear I heard something back when we passed Kepuhi, but…nothing.”_

“Kepuhi?” Rick repeated looking over at TC. “That’s the opposite direction from where we’re headed.”

 _“It could have been a gull, Rick,”_ Juliet pointed out.

“Did it _sound_ like a gull?” Rick returned.

Instead of replying, Juliet asked, _“Did you get Katsumoto to call in that favor with the Coast Guard?”_

“Yeah, he’s on it,” Rick replied, thinking about how quickly the Detective had moved when they’d called him right after finally reaching Juliet.

The worry triggered in both Juliet and Katsumoto when Rick reached out saying that Magnum had been missing for over sixteen hours and he suspected he’d taken the surf ski out early that morning surprised him. No anticipated scoffing, no asking for confirmation that he wasn’t shacked up with a non-existent girl. Juliet didn’t even ask him to confirm that the Ferrari was at Robin’s estate.

It was as though they’d both had their own misgivings throughout the day, and he was just confirming what they’d already feared was true: Magnum was in trouble.

_“And have they started their search grid?”_

Rick nodded, though he knew she couldn’t see him. “I gave them the coordinates of Robin’s beach and they headed west with us, since you were east.”

“I’m turning around,” TC suddenly declared.

Rick didn’t bother questioning him. When it came to instincts, TC’s were unparalleled.

“Tell Higgy to do a wide circle and head back toward Kepuhi,” TC instructed.

Rick relayed the message. “What are you thinking, big guy?”

“The Molokai Express,” he replied.

“Oh shit,” Rick and Juliet exclaimed as one.

 _“He should have been able to paddle out of that current, though,”_ Juliet protested.

Rick shuddered. “Unless he got knocked off the outrigger somehow,” he pointed out.

 _“Oh, God, Rick,”_ Juliet breathed. _“If he’s been in the ocean for long….”_

“What do you have on the yacht for first aid?”

 _“Hold a moment,”_ Juliet replied, and he heard her shouting something to her companion. After about five minutes, she returned. _“Water, miler blanket for hyperthermia, and the typical wound treatment.”_

“Any catheters, IV bags, anything like that?” Rick asked, doing an inventory in his head.

 _“This is hardly a hospital yacht,”_ Juliet replied, her frustration more out of the inability to help than anything else.

“Right, right, sorry,” Rick shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “TC, how much fuel we got?”

“About four more hours’ worth.”

“Ok, Higgy,” he returned to the call, “get a hold of Katsumoto and let him know what we’re thinking and then let me know when you get near Kepuhi. We’re going to have to refuel by six, but the sun will be up before then, so….”

 _“Understood,”_ Juliet replied. _“Right. I’ll be in touch.”_

Rick put his cell phone on the rack TC had rigged for his GPS, then slipped the headset back on and trained one of the large flashlights on the dark water below.

“He’s a strong swimmer,” he said out loud.

“Strongest in their class, Nuzo said,” TC asserted.

Rick kept his eyes on the slowly rolling waves. “Told me he once tread water for 18 hours in BUD/s.”

“Did it once, could do it again,” TC nodded.

Rick stole a look over at his friend. “We’re gonna find him, right?”

TC didn’t reply, just kept scanning the front and sides of the chopper. The darkness of the early morning hours felt heavy, as if the night clung with greedy fingers, unwilling to let the light win. It was reassuring to think of the inevitability of dawn, but terrifying that it was still so far away.

He felt as though TC were also waiting for the stillness of dawn noticed only by those who stood in the night and felt the world change around them with the coming of day.

“He found us,” Rick remembered.

“I was thinking about that, too,” TC replied, his exhale audible over the headset. “I thought we’d reached the edge of our luck on that Op.”

“He almost got court marshalled, too,” Rick commented. “Going downrange without orders, on his own….” He shook his head, letting the memory wash over him.

Nuzo had been called away on assignment with another team and Rick and TC were ordered to get a group of villagers from a hot zone to a neighboring town. Thomas was off duty to recover from a shrapnel wound he’d received covering an APC that had been cut off from its convoy. When Rick and TC hadn’t reported back, Thomas had gone after them—not even bothering to inform Captain Greene before he left.

Rick had never been happier to see someone show up out of the blue. They’d been pinned down inside a dilapidated hut, covering two women and three kids from the village. Thomas rounded the back of the enemy, took out three before they turned on him, but evened the odds enough Rick and TC were able to get the women and kids out safely. Thomas was sporting a bandaged arm, but happily swung one of the boys up on his back as they marched to town.

He could still hear Greene’s bellow as he gave Thomas a severe dressing down for his actions—even though those actions saved two Marines and five villagers. He’d broken the chain of command—a habit Thomas continued to this day with Katsumoto.

“Sun’s coming up,” TC suddenly remarked.

Rick startled, looking at his watch. It was nearly five a.m. He’d been so lost in his head he’d missed the moment when the world shifted from black to gray, the yawn of morning creeping over the ocean like a child reluctant to leave their bed. Dawn scraped the edge of the horizon, pushing away the last of the stars.

He grabbed his phone, tugging the head set back down around his neck.

“Juliet?”

 _“We’re tracking along Kepuhi,”_ she reported. _“Katsumoto reached the Coast Guard. They’re heading this way—should be here in less than an hour.”_

“Where’s Katsumoto?”

_“He’s on the mainland, waiting for a report.”_

“You see anything?”

_“Nothing yet.”_

The first rays of sunlight finally breached the edge of the horizon, the pink and blue colors wrapping around to their side of the island as light finally rendered their flashlights useless.

“There’s the _T.R. Belle_ ,” TC called out, nodding.

Rick holstered his cell within TC’s reach as the big man dropped the chopper low, passing the yacht as they scoured the water, eyes burning as they stared at miles and miles of blue ocean. Rick didn’t feel the lack of sleep or the straining of his muscles from the search. His eyes didn’t burn, his body didn’t beg for rest.

Every part of him was focused, on target, ready to complete this mission.

And then he saw him.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered. “There, TC— _there_!”

“I got him,” TC replied, somehow managing to still sound calm. “Get your vest on. I’ll get Higgins and radio the Coast Guard.”

Rick was already fumbling for his life vest and wrestling with his seat belt. Now that he’d spotted Thomas, he didn’t want to take his gaze away. He was a small flash on an infinite canvass. TC had to circle around to get him closer in order to not swamp Thomas with the rotator wash. Rick stood on the runners of the chopper, gripping the sides as he eyed his landing.

And just before he jumped, Thomas slipped below the surface.

“No,” Rick whispered, letting go of the side and jumping feet first, sinking beneath the surface for a moment before bobbing up with help from his vest.

The water was shockingly cold. By his estimation, Thomas could have been in it for nearly 24 hours. He had to get to him, _now_. He swam to where he last saw his friend, spinning in a circle as he tried to spy any return to the surface.

“Thomas!” he cried, unbuckling the life vest. “ _Thomas_!”

Freeing himself from the vest, Rick dove down, eyes burning in the salt water, searching frantically. Sunlight cut through the azure water. Time seemed to slow as Rick looked below his churning legs.

Suddenly, he saw Thomas sinking as if in slow motion, his arms reaching up toward through the gem-like water, eyes closed, body completely at the mercy of the sea.

Rick swam down, reaching until he was able to grasp Thomas by a wrist. Thomas remained limp in his hold; he didn’t grab back. Rick flipped his body around and swam for the surface, hauling Thomas behind him.

Gasping as he broke into the air, he floundered for his life vest, holding Thomas with one arm and the vest with the other. The smaller man was completely pliant in his arms, his body so chilled it was like ice except for where his shoulder and forehead rolled against Rick’s exposed neck. The skin there was on fire from a visibly horrendous sunburn.

His mouth was slack, his lips purple from a gruesome combination of cold and blood.

“Tommy, c’mon,” Rick gasped, shaking his friend. “Don’t do this, man. We found you! We got you, now. C’mon!”

Rick arched his neck, looking over his shoulder for the _T.R. Belle_ , seeing it approaching slowly, Juliet on deck. A man he’d never seen before was at the helm, Juliet on her knees at the stern, reaching her arms out to pull them aboard. He tossed the life vest toward her and she used it to pull them close, then reached for Thomas.

She got her hands beneath his bare shoulders and Rick heard her involuntary gasp at the touch of his skin before she reared back and pulled the unconscious man from the water. Rick pushed as she pulled, and they were able to get Thomas on the deck of the _Belle_ , Rick following close behind.

“ _Jesus_ , Magnum,” Juliet exclaimed, her hands shaking as they hovered over his limp form. He couldn’t blame her: the man looked dead.

Rick went to his knees, ignoring the blistered red skin of Thomas’ shoulders, the too-pale, wrung-out condition of his feet and hands, the festering appearance of his latest scar and leaned an ear over his friend’s slack mouth. Not feeling breath on his face, he lay a hand on Thomas’ sternum, testing for movement.

“He’s not breathing,” he stated, tipping Thomas’ head back into rescue position, pinched his nose, and breathing air into his mouth.

He came up after two breaths and wiped away the taste of blood from where Thomas’ lips cracked open under the pressure. Leaning down once more he gave his friend three more breaths, then checked for air by tipping his face to the side against Thomas mouth.

“C’mon, Tommy,” he pleaded. “Don’t give up on me now, man. Not after you fought so hard.”

He shifted position and began CPR, counting as he thrust downward, willing Thomas’ body to remember.

“Hughes, get us to shore, now,” Juliet shouted at the man at the wheel. “Radio Katsumoto that we need transportation to the nearest hospital.”

Rick breathed for Thomas once more and pulled back abruptly when he felt his friend’s body jerk under him. He gently rolled Thomas to the side as the smaller man coughed up seawater, his entire body spasming with the force of fought-for air. Juliet unfurled the miler blanket and covered him with it as Rick pulled Thomas up against him for skin to skin contact.

“It’s like holding a block of ice,” Rick rolled his lips closed, sucking the saltwater from them as he wrapped his arms around Thomas over the miler blanket, doing everything in his power to warm him up.

“He’s extremely hypothermic,” Higgins said, her voice trembling. “He not even shivering.”

“Start at the extremities,” Rick told her. “We warm up his heart too fast and he could have a heart attack. Start with the legs.”

He didn’t even want to think about how painful it would be to rub Thomas’ sunburned arms now. He wrapped the blanket securely around Thomas’ upper portion, holding his friend close, his own body heat transferring to Thomas as other man lay pliant against him. Thomas’ head lolled against Rick’s throat as his body rocked with the motion of Juliet’s vigorous rubbing of his legs.

Reaching up, Rick lay a hand across Thomas’ forehead, keeping his neck from rocking too much.

“God, he’s freezing, but his face is burning up,” Rick shook his head.

“Where are his clothes?” Juliet exclaimed as she continued to rub Thomas legs. They were too pale, corpse-like, and the skin on his feet was shriveled from so many hours in saltwater.

“I’m guessing he tried to make floaters, until that stopped working,” Rick nodded at the other man—Hughes, he remembered Juliet saying—as he wrapped a blanket they must have pulled up from the sleeper and wrapped it around Rick’s shoulders and Thomas’ body. Rick had only a moment to register silvered hair, an athletic physique, and a wedding ring before the man returned to the wheel.

“How long do you think…,” Juliet couldn’t finish the question.

Rick shook his head. “He left me that message a little over 24 hours ago.”

Juliet shook her head and kept rubbing, her cheeks flushed with emotion.

“C’mon, Tommy,” Rick said, arms tightening around the man, willing his own body heat to infuse into him. “You’re safe now, man. You did it. You made it.”

He felt the first shudder slip through Thomas.

“That’s it, man,” he encouraged. “Come on back to us.”

“ _No se la pregunta_ ,” Thomas rasped, his cracked lips bleeding against Rick’s collarbone.

“Was that…Spanish?” Juliet asked.

Rick nodded. “He slipped back into that a lot in the caves when he was….”

“Wounded?”

Rick shook his head, “Not just wounded. When it was… _really_ bad. When we thought we were going to lose him.”

Thomas shivered again, this time a bit stronger.

_“Vamos a jugar un juego, Papa.”_

“Huh,” Rick frowned. “He never talked about his father, though.”

Thomas continued to mutter; Rick caught more references to ‘Papa’ and several to Nuzo, but nothing came close to making sense. As they were able to increase the blood flow, his whole body began to spasm and shake. Some of the spasms were so intense they arched his back away from Rick’s body as though an electric shock was being sent through his frame.

Rick held on, keeping him wrapped, keeping him close, and murmured nonsensical words of encouragement as Thomas rattled against him.

“We need to get some water into him,” Rick said. “But I’m afraid to let him go.”

“Don’t,” Juliet stood up, wrapping Thomas’ legs with a spare blanket from the sleeper until the only bit of skin that showed was his sunburned face. She retrieved a water bottle and uncapped it, holding the opening to Thomas’ trembling lips.

He shook so much the water simply dribbled down his chin and across his damaged mouth. Juliet pulled the bottle away, frowning. Shifting her position so that she practically cocooned Thomas between herself and Rick, she lowered her face until her mouth hovered just over Thomas’ ear. Rick felt her hair against his shoulder, smelled the fresh lilies and orchids scent of her perfume, and held completely still.

“Magnum, it’s Juliet,” she said in a low, calming voice.

Thomas showed no sign of hearing her; his chin trembled, teeth chattering as his breath shuddered in weak exhales.

“We found you, you’re safe now,” she continued, purposefully repeating Rick’s reassurances. “I need you to drink some water for me.”

 _“No vayas,”_ Thomas rasped.

Juliet blinked. “I’m not going to leave, Mag—Thomas,” she promised. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rick shook his head slowly. He knew Thomas had no idea Juliet was there. He wasn’t talking to _her_. He was talking to someone else…and that terrified Rick.

“N-nuz…,” Thomas whimpered, and Rick felt him spasm against him once more, a grimace pulling his sunburned face taut.

“Easy, man,” Rick soothed. “How about you drink a little for us, huh?”

 _“No vayas,”_ Thomas repeated, and it sounded like a sob.

Rick nodded at Juliet and she tried once more to get some water past the wounded man’s lips. This time she was successful for a moment until he began to choke, coughing roughly and shaking against Rick until he was once again barely breathing.

“Easy, easy, hey,” Rick crooned, practically rocking them as he worked to keep his hold on Magnum’s shaking body. “Breathe, Tommy…just breathe. You got this.”

“Got this,” Thomas repeated, his swollen eyes still stubbornly closed.

“Hey, at least we’re back to English now,” Rick forced a smile, then looked up at Juliet. “How far?”

She pushed to her feet and hurried to the wheelhouse. In minutes she was back, shoving her hair from her face and crouching down next to them once more.

“Five minutes out from the closest harbor. Katsumoto has an ambulance there waiting for us.”

“TC?”

“He landed and is going to meet you at the hospital.”

“When we get—” Rick started, but then stopped suddenly as he felt Thomas latch onto his hand where it was wrapped around his torso. “Thomas?”

“Nuzo,” Thomas whimpered.

“It’s me, man. It’s Rick.”

Thomas’ grip tightened as his body shook, his back arching with an intense muscle spasm. “Nuzo… _no vayas_.”

“Don’t go,” Rick whispered, resting his forehead against Thomas’ hair. “If only, man. If fucking only.”

“What he must have been through,” Juliet whispered, crouched next to them, her hand covering her mouth. “His shoulder wound seems to have reopened, too.”

“Saw that,” Rick nodded. “Guess treading water for over twenty hours two weeks after being shot isn’t the best PT.”

Juliet shook her head. “How did he survive it?”

Rick felt Thomas’ grip tighten as his body shook and he curled as much around the other man as he could. “He’s one of the toughest men I’ve ever met,” Rick said quietly. “And he wouldn’t do that to us, not like that.”

“He can hardly… _will_ himself to cheat death if the elements are against him,” Juliet argued.

“You’d be surprised,” Rick countered. “This man stood inside Hell and heard the Devil laugh from the shadows.”

“His shoulder looked infected,” Juliet murmured, almost to herself. “Probably from bacteria in the ocean. If we hadn’t gotten to him when we did….”

Rick didn’t respond. He’d seen enough battle wounds to know the other side of _if_. He simply held onto Thomas as his friend shook, as he murmured and cried out and called for parents and friends who were long gone.

People Rick didn’t want Thomas to find.

He held him and he didn’t speak. It felt as though all his words had been used up.

As Juliet’s friend guided them to the port, Rick heard sirens and voices on walkie-talkies calling orders to each other. He saw Katsumoto standing at the edge of the pier, saw him searching the boat deck and saw his face go slack when he saw Thomas shaking apart in Rick’s arms.

He registered EMTs boarding the boat, pulling the blanket from around them, taking Thomas’ temp and blood pressure, calling out scarily low numbers of each. They shifted Thomas to a backboard and starting an IV.

The entire time Thomas trembled, spasmed, and refused to relinquish his grip on Rick’s hand, muttering _don’t go_ in Spanish over and over.

“I’m coming with you,” Rick informed the EMT who was covering Thomas with a heated blanket before moving him to the stretcher.

Intent on getting his patient to the ambulance and not interested in arguing about it, the EMT simply nodded and Rick jogged along beside the stretcher, then climbed into the back of the ambulance, holding Thomas’ hand the entire time.

 _“No vayas,”_ Thomas rasped as the EMTs layered another heated blanket on him.

“I got you, brother,” Rick promised. “I’m not going anywhere. You bleed, we bleed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> The reference to KIM (Keep In Memory) and some of Thomas' flashbacks and recollections were pulled from research into SEAL training and some actual sailor accounts of battle I was able to find online. It's absolutely riveting and extremely humbling to read what some of our soldiers and sailors have experienced in lives utterly different from my own.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

_Thomas  
Monday, time has lost all meaning_

Pain slipped across him like a living thing, blanketing him in a bone-deep misery, coursing across his shoulder with claws of agony, tearing at his muscles, twisting his bones. A scream built deep in his gut and the only thing he was truly aware of was the desperate need to hold it inside— _don’t let them hear_.

It slipped free despite him, a cry of agony escaping the haze of torment and echoing around him, bouncing off the darkness itself and crashing back against him like a surgical strike.

“Easy, man, we got you….”

The voice was familiar, comforting, and far away. It faded into the darkness and he grasped for it, needing it as an anchor.

“Don’t go….” He wanted to— _tried_ to—beg, to desperately plead for the voice to stay, but pain stole his control. It crashed his senses, shook his body relentlessly until he was weeping, wanting the darkness to return just to get it to stop.

Voices swam around him, bobbing against him like the surface of the ocean, wave after wave of words and sensations and pain.

“He’s crashing, get a line in!”

“You hang in there, Thomas, you hear me?”

_“That’s your only job. You don’t quit.”_

“Get the paddles—no wait, I got v-fib, we got him, we got him back.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Tommy. I’m right here, man.”

_“Mi valiente chico.”_

There was something in him that screamed and kicked, scared of what might lay ahead, desperately clinging to life. He felt as though he was reaching for the surface of the ocean, needing to break through, needing to just _breathe_ , but water was all around him, pressing him down. It was like seeing the world from the bottom of a well, and yet being blind to it all at the same time.

He felt his body shaking, the intensity of the pain sweeping him in great tidal waves of anguish. He wanted to fight it—he tried, but the current pulled him under and with a last gasping breath he let the darkness carry him away.

* * *

_Rick  
Monday, 6:32am_

When they reached the ER, Thomas’ hand was gently removed from his and Rick was expertly moved aside. He stayed to the back of the organized chaos, watching as the doctors and nurses swarmed around Thomas’ trembling body.

He knew enough about what was happening to accept that Thomas was in bad shape— _again_ —but not enough to know exactly what that meant. Heated blankets and warm saline for the hypothermia. Trying to turn the tide of the dehydration, combating low blood pressure. And his shoulder….

The moment one of the nurses began to clean the re-opened shoulder wound, a keening sound slid through Thomas’ parted lips, a cry that was at once a muffled scream and an agonized sob. He’d heard his friend make that sound once before—in a damp, dimly-lit cave, hope a sparse commodity. Rick couldn’t just leave him alone in the middle of all that misery.

“You hang in there, Thomas, you hear me?”

A hand was on his elbow and before he knew it, he was being forcibly escorted out of the curtained area by a small, but very determined, woman.

“I’m not going anywhere, Tommy,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m right here, man.”

“Please wait outside, sir,” the nurse said, and he could tell by her tone it was not a suggestion. “We will come find you when we have news.”

Rick stood, silent and still, as the doors to the ER unit closed in front of him, the sound of Thomas’ muffled cries of pain quieting with the separation. He felt anger coiling inside him once more, its claws stretching and flexing to sharpen themselves on his heart.

This should _not_ be happening. It wasn’t right—it wasn’t _fair_.

He needed someone to blame. Something to target.

“Rick?”

He flinched at the sound of TC’s voice, trying to calm his racing heart as he slowly turned to face his friend. The world around him inexplicably felt a bit sharper, more tactile—edges appearing on the exhales of his breath. Something seemed to shift in the air; his perception was hyper-focused, as though he were staring down a scope on a rifle.

“TC, man….” He stared at his friend, eyes burning.

“Come with me,” TC stated, his face impassive.

He reached out and took Rick by the arm, leading him down the hall and out through the main ER doors, into the early-morning air where he finally released him. Rick paced away a few feet, shoving his hands into his hair, pulling in a tight breath.

He felt oddly electrified.

“I know you need a target right now,” TC said from behind him, his voice low, calm. “But the mission was completed, brother. We found him.”

“He’s…he’s _wrecked_ , man,” Rick spat out through clenched teeth. “And I want…,” he shook his head, purposely not turning around to face TC. He couldn’t. Not yet. Not when he literally wanted to hit something. _Hard_. Until his knuckles bled. “I want to make someone _pay_.”

“Rick, man, we don’t know what happened—”

“Oh, bullshit,” Rick growled, anger bringing him around to face his friend. He startled slightly to see Juliet, Katsumoto, and the silver-haired Hughes from the yacht standing a respectful distance away, watching them. “We may not know how he ended up in the water, but we _know_ what happened. It was _her_.”

“You can’t blame Hannah for everything, brother.”

“ _Why not_?” Rick demanded in a roar. “It was Hannah who got us eighteen _fucking_ months in Hell. Hannah who _shot_ Thomas. And _Hannah_ who keeps haunting him—she practically chased in out into the ocean, TC!”

He pushed the flat of his hands against his friend’s broad chest. A dangerous light hit TC’s eyes.

“All right, you want a target?” TC demanded, his voice growing in volume.

That brought Rick up short. “What?”

“I mean it, man,” TC stepped forward, hands spread out at his side. “You want a target? You got one.” He slapped his palms against his chest. “Give it your best shot.”

“I’m not hitting you,” Rick shook his head, feeling his fury begin to cool in reaction to the look in TC’s eyes.

“Why not? You hit Thomas!”

In his periphery, Rick saw Juliet flinch at that.

“That was…I didn’t mean—”

“You got all this _rage_ built up in you,” TC stepped forward again, crowding Rick back a step. “You want to make someone _pay_ for our friend being all busted up in there? Let’s go! I’m _right here!_ ”

Rick put his hands up in surrender, palms flat. TC stepped forward again and Rick pushed against him. He was suddenly keenly aware of their audience. Daylight was burning off the dawn, and the trio who’d been at this all night was looking worn and wary. He was newly desperate to deflect attention.

“TC, c’mon, man.”

“You’ve been ricocheting around this island for _weeks_ ,” TC continued, plowing forward as though there wasn’t a world waking up around them. “You been _looking_ for trouble. Now you got it.”

“I don’t want trouble with you,” Rick protested, keeping his hands up.

“You wanted it with Thomas,” TC challenged, pushing forward, capturing Rick’s attention.

He shook his head. “No! No, I didn’t! I—”

“Then what? Huh? Why are you out here pacing around like you’re on some kind of rogue mission?”

“Because—” He choked, his voice catching on the box of thorns where he kept his emotions.

“Because why?”

This time when TC stepped forward, Rick pushed back.

“Because I _can’t lose him_ , dammit!” he shouted.

With that confession the world seemed to still. Rick’s heart pounded at the base of his throat, his breath hammering through his nose, his jaw clenched tight. TC took two steps back, waiting him out.

“We…we _barely_ made it out of those caves…and then he almost died in Germany, and I…,” Rick swallowed hard, pushing a hand through his hair. “She shows up again, after we finally start to get all that behind us and he ends up with a bullet in him….”

He felt the energy drain out of him in a sudden, dizzying rush. He crouched down, resting his elbows on his knees, dropping his forehead into his palms.

“Even before we got captured, I knew I was only alive because of Thomas,” he said, his voice directed toward the pavement. “And I don’t mean because he saved my life, either. I mean…because he…anchored me. All of you did, but—”

“He’s different,” TC agreed softly, dropping a hand to the top of Rick’s head. “Always has been.”

“It’s like we got a reprieve when we got out of that Valley. Another chance. Then we lost Nuzo…and I…I wouldn’t survive losing Thomas,” Rick confessed softly. “I know I wouldn’t.”

“We still got him, brother,” TC reminded him. “Hang onto that.”

Rick nodded, then rubbed his face vigorously before allowing TC to haul him to his feet.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said quietly, pulling the bigger man in for a one-armed hug. “Thanks for….”

“It’s nothing,” TC said, a soft smile relaxing the lines of his face. He captured the back of Rick’s neck and pulled his face against his shoulder for a moment. “It’s what we do, right?”

Rick nodded, pulling away and digging the heel of his hand into his burning eyes.

“Do we…,” Juliet spoke up from the sidelines, turning TC around with the sound of her voice, “do we know anything?”

Rick sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “They pushed me out just before TC showed up. Said they’d find us when they had news.”

“How did he look?” Katsumoto asked, worry plain in the lines on his face.

Rick shook his head, trying to find words. “Bad,” was all he could think to say. “He looked real bad.”

TC rotated him by the shoulder and gestured to the other three to follow them inside to the waiting room—a location they were all, unfortunately, intimately familiar with.

“We think it’s possible he was in the water since around the time he called you,” Katsumoto said, a grim expression on his face.

Rick marveled to himself, both appreciative and amused by the fact that no one was mentioning having watched him have a rather spectacular meltdown just moments before. It was a bit amazing what the human condition could allow for when necessary.

“You hear something?” TC asked.

Katsumoto nodded, crossing over to the coffee station. “A report came in from the Coast Guard. They picked up a bunch of kids in a speedboat for drinking. One of them said something about knocking a guy off a surfboard that morning.”

“Son of a bitch,” Rick sank into one of the chairs nearest the door. “Means he survived out there anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four hours.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and hung his head low, letting his neck stretch. He was gritty and disheveled from his impromptu swim. The smell of coffee hit his senses and he looked up in surprise to see Katsumoto holding out a large, Styrofoam cup like a peace offering. He took it with a nod of thanks and slumped back against the wall, eyes tracking to where TC sat directly opposite him—as though positioned to keep him in his sights—Juliet next to TC and Katsumoto next to Rick. Hughes stood off to the side, an unwitting observer to their latest chaos.

“I can’t stop thinking…I _almost_ called him after Cate came by,” he looked across at TC. “Just to check on him. Just to see how he was doing after bailing on her. But…,” he sighed, “I decided he was a grown man and didn’t need some nagging friend checking on his love life.”

“You think that’s bad,” Katsumoto spoke up, “I actually considered putting an APB out on him after I left you guys at the King Kamehameha Club.”

“What for?” TC asked, surprised.

Katsumoto lifted a shoulder. “I was impatient,” he confessed. “Wanted the information he had about my case.”

“So, what stopped you?” Rick inquired.

“Decided I didn’t need to hassle him just to convenience my own timeline,” Katsumoto sighed, dragged a hand down his face. “Wishing I’d gone with my first instinct now.”

“Likewise,” Juliet said softly. “I was so irritated with him not being available to check on the yacht’s engine, I left him a…strongly opinionated voicemail. I almost just let it go, but my temper got the best of me.”

“Well, don’t worry, Juliet,” Rick offered. “His phone is at the bottom of the sea, now.”

“As it turned out,” the silver-haired Hughes spoke up, “we didn’t require his assistance after all.”

“Yes, thank you ever so for reminding me of that fact,” Juliet arched an eyebrow at him. “Makes my voicemail even more inappropriate.”

Hughes lifted a shoulder. “Glad I could help.”

“I’m sorry…uh, who are you?” Katsumoto asked.

“He’s Juliet’s _colleague_ ,” Rick offered.

Juliet rolled her eyes. “Martin Hughes, formerly of British Intelligence, currently enjoying my friendship…for now.” She glanced at Hughes with a wry smile.

“Juliet and I share a common enemy,” Hughes informed them. “Our former boss.”

“So…he really is just a colleague?” Rick replied, his voice slightly deflated.

Juliet smiled. “So sorry to disappoint the book club gossip circle, but yes.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Hughes nodded at each, then looked at Juliet. “I believe I’ll show myself back to the estate. Give me ring if I can bring you anything.”

Rick blinked in mild surprise at the man’s accurate assumption that Juliet would wait with them for news. She smiled at him, and Hughes offered the rest a wave before departing. They sat in silence for several minutes before Juliet sighed.

“It’s somewhat frightening to me how common this has become to us all,” she mentioned.

TC leaned his head back against the wall. “Weren’t we _just_ here two weeks ago?”

“And then two months before that?” Katsumoto reminded them, recalling the desperate search for Thomas in the island jungles and finding him, bleeding out, next to the body of a drug dealer.

“Too many times,” Rick murmured. “When we were in the hospital in Germany—after we were sure he was actually going to make it home with us—Nuzo had this crazy idea of turning his dog tags into a combination tracker and shock collar.” He chuckled, glancing at TC. “Remember that?”

TC was already grinning. “Said that way he’d always know where he was and could stop him from throwing himself in front of any more bullets.”

Rick felt his laughter bubble up again. “Thomas never knew about it, of course, but when he took off his tags and put them in his trunk, Nuzo was so worked up TC and I thought he’d actually done it.”

“I was sure he had some training remote on him somewhere,” TC laughed softly. “He really did love that guy.”

“Nuzo was a good man,” Juliet offered with a soft smile.

“The best,” Rick agreed, nodding.

He felt exhaustion pull at him, the adrenalin from the past two days slipping away and leaving an echo chamber in its wake. They sat quietly in the waiting room, even Katsumoto, which surprised him. The morning drew on, the sounds of the hospital coming alive around them as time ticked by. Juliet refilled his coffee once. Katsumoto brought some donuts up from the cafeteria for everyone.

And they waited.

“I hate this quiet,” TC said at one point. “It’s too familiar.”

Rick watched him from across the waiting room, studying how the big man somehow seemed to be at once calm and tense, his head dropped back against the wall, his eyes on the ceiling.

“I had a colleague,” Juliet began, glancing over at Rick, “a different one,” she offered with a small smile, “who had a habit of always playing music when we were not on assignment. Always. In his car, listening to a Walkman—”

“You’re dating yourself, Higgy,” Rick murmured.

“In any case, it was all the bloody time. I called him on it once. Said I couldn’t hear myself think and could he just let it be quiet for a moment,” she slouched back, crossing her arms over her chest. “He gave me this look…I’ll never forget it. He said he needed the noise because the world was too quiet. And the quiet—”

“Screamed,” TC supplied, not taking his eyes from the ceiling.

“Yes,” Juliet nodded. “He said the quiet screamed at him.”

“He’s not wrong,” Rick said and somehow wasn’t surprised when he saw Katsumoto nod in understanding.

There was a clock on the wall in the waiting room—small, white with black numbers. It had a very distinct _click-tock_ sound as it measured the seconds while the hands slowly traversed the circumference of time. Rick had almost composed an entire song out of the rhythm by the time a sadly familiar face stepped into the room.

“Folks,” Dr. Yeats greeted, lines of weariness drawing down his thin face in currents of concern.

As they all started to rise, he stopped them by sitting near Rick, turned a bit sideways on the chair to face all of them. A fist formed in Rick’s gut. Yeats had been the doctor who treated Thomas when they found him in the jungle and when Hannah shot him.

Both of those times when he read off the report, he’d stayed on his feet.

“How’s Thomas?” TC asked, saving Rick the trouble of having to find where his voice had escaped.

“Well, I’m not going to lie to you,” he said, folding his narrow fingers together and leaning his elbows on his knees. “He’s in for a long haul.”

Rick swallowed and nodded. “We’re pretty sure he was in the water for almost twenty hours.”

Yeats nodded, not looking surprised. “We were able to elevate his body temperature, but he spiked a fever,” he said. “We are certain it’s from the re-opened shoulder wound. There is a lot of bacteria in the ocean.”

“So…he went from hypothermic…to a fever?” Juliet frowned.

“His core body temperature is not stable,” Yeats revealed. “It can happen with severe hypothermia. He is going to require constant monitoring to get his body to remember how to maintain a survivable temp. But…that’s not the rough part,” he said, letting his eyes land on each of them. “Mr. Magnum is also dealing with severe dehydration, second- and third-degree sunburn, most likely sun blindness, though we won’t know how severe that is until he regains consciousness, and extreme muscle fatigue.”

Rick swallowed, feeling as though he were waiting for a hammer to drop on them.

“I’ll spare you the scientific jargon, but the bottom line is that many of his muscle simply may not work for some time. It’s a bit like paralysis—”

“Paralyzed?” Rick choked out.

“It’s _like_ paralysis,” Yeats corrected. “He is able to move; he simply lacks the strength.” Yeats spread his hands out in a virtual shrug. “Think of it like this. Picture how sore you are the day after your hardest workout,” he looked directly at Rick for a moment, “and the multiply that by ten… _everywhere_. He will need help to do some of the most basic things for quite some time as his body recovers.”

Rick exchanged a glance with TC as Yeats continued.

“Lastly, prolonged exposure to saltwater has done a number on his skin. We will need to treat it carefully and watch for secondary infections.”

Rick rubbed his face. Yeats took a breath and pushed slowly to his feet.

“Now, I know from experience it’ll be impossible to get rid of you, so I’ve decided to put you to work,” he declared. “Any volunteers for—”

Rick and TC were on their feet before he finished his sentence, Juliet and Katsumoto close behind. However, without warning, the world around Rick seemed to waver, gray edging forward from the corners. He swayed on his feet, surprised that the sudden change in position hit him so rapidly.

“Easy,” Yeats reached out a hand, bracing Rick at the elbow. “How about you sit down for a minute?”

“I’m fine,” Rick protested, but found his knees bending of their own accord, his body sinking back down to his chair. “I’ll sit with him.”

“No offense, Mr. Wright,” Yeats shook his head, “but you look exhausted. I don’t need another patient on my rotation.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Juliet volunteered, smiling reassuringly at Rick. “Just the first shift. You and TC get some rest and food and come back. Few hours, tops.”

“That sounds like a plan, Higgy,” TC agreed before Rick could say anything. “Worrying about Thomas is a full-time job.”

“Can I get a report of Mr. Magnum’s injuries?” Katsumoto asked Yeats. “I want to add it to the report against the punks who put him in this position in the first place.”

“Happy to help,” Yeats nodded. He looked at the rest. “He’s a lucky man to have friends like you.”

Rick huffed a laugh. “It’s not luck, doc,” he said, glancing up at the man. “He’s earned this.”

* * *

_Thomas  
Monday, who knows when_

Thomas was in hell.

There were moments he burned so hot there were flames licking up his skin, making him gasp desperately for air. Other moments he felt so cold he worried he was buried in ice, his body shaking and trembling in a frigid grip.

The sensations alternated like the confused currents of a battery; all he could do was ride out each assault. There was no break in the agony.

He tried to hide, huddled in the darkest recesses of his mind, clinging to disjointed memories of a time before pain and bullets and betrayal. A time when he played road trip games with his father, when his mother worried for him to come home safe.

A time when all his friends were alive. When home was a safe place and didn’t try to freeze him. Or drown him.

He saw his father sitting next to him in the car, a navy-blue Tiger’s ball cap pulled low over his brow, his face lined with years and experience, folded into creases by his grin.

He saw Nuzo, his bright blue eyes dancing, his strong hands holding a weapon with confidence and purpose.

He saw his mother, arms open, reaching for him. Her brown eyes soft and sad.

He called for them, trying to draw them closer, needing to touch, to hold, to know they were there, they were real. They weren’t just memories. That they wouldn’t go.

But escape only worked for so long. All too soon the heat swept him. And the ice shook him. And he wondered what he’d done to deserve such punishment.

And he prayed he’d be forgiven.

* * *

_Rick  
Monday, 9:42pm_

He hadn’t meant to—hadn’t wanted to—but the minute TC dropped him at his house, Rick fell face-first onto his couch and slept for five solid hours. The minute he woke, he showered, stuffing a sandwich into his mouth as he drove back to the hospital.

Juliet sent him a text two hours prior stating there had been no change. He’d checked in with TC on the way, leaving him a voicemail. He pulled into the hospital parking lot and was out of his car before he realized he’d grabbed Thomas’ Tiger’s hat on instinct.

After checking Juliet’s text to see what room they’d moved Thomas to after being treated in the ER, he grabbed two coffees and headed directly there. When he stepped into the room, he heard as soft, low voice murmuring a melody—a song he hadn’t heard before.

“Of all the money that e'er I spent; I've spent it in good company. And all the harm that ever I did, alas it was to none but me.”

He stepped carefully around the curtain, not wanting to disturb the singer, and was shocked to see Juliet Higgins leaning against Thomas’ bed, a soft cloth in one hand gently stroking his friend’s blistered forehead, the other holding his swollen hand, her thumb softly rubbing the skin there.

“And all I've done for want of wit to memory now I can't recall. So, fill to me the parting glass; good night and joy be with you all,” she paused and took a slow breath.

Rick cleared his throat, wincing slightly as she flinched and pulled away from Thomas.

“You startled me,” she confessed, easing back as Rick stepped fully into the room.

She reached out and took the coffees from him, setting one on the table next to Thomas’ bed and sipping the other.

“Sorry about that,” Rick apologized, distractedly.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from Thomas’ form; he was covered with several blankets from the shoulders down, his hands were swollen and burned, his arms practically glowing red in the low light of the room. His shoulders were blistered—his left one heavily bandaged.

His face didn’t even look like Thomas—it was red and blistered, his lips scabbed over and parted as his breathe wheezed in and out. The nasal cannula looked as though it pressed against his cheeks and his eyes were so swollen his dark lashes cast shadows on his cheekbones.

“What’s the shiny stuff on his eyes?” he asked.

“Dr. Yeats said that it was to help with the damage done from the salt and sun,” Juliet told him. “Will hopefully help reduce any sun blindness.”

Rick nodded, his legs feeling suddenly hollow. He’d seen Thomas survive damage before—bullet wounds and beatings, shrapnel and stabbings. But it had always been from something done _to_ him. This was just…exposure to the world. To the sea.

“Jesus, Tommy,” he whispered, sinking to the edge of the bed and taking Thomas’ hand. His skin felt heated and stretched. “They say anything about what they’re giving him?”

Juliet nodded. “Fluids, antibiotics, pain meds,” she replied. “Yeats made sure it was the meds he didn’t resist,” she assured him. She sighed a bit and stretched her arms over her head. “He’s been mumbling a lot—not all of it is clear, and most of it is in Spanish.”

“More about Nuzo?” Rick guessed.

Juliet tilted her head. “Interestingly enough, no. Mostly about his parents.”

Rick blinked in surprise, looking over at her. “Huh.”

“I thought the same,” she looked back at Thomas. “He’s never spoken of them to me.”

“He’s rarely talked about them to us, either,” Rick said. He put the Tiger’s cap on the table next to his coffee. “Except for that,” he nodded at the hat, “and finding out his mother died when we were held prisoner, we wouldn’t know anything about them.”

“I suppose life can create dividing lines between selves,” Juliet said quietly. “We are rarely the same people away from our parents as we are near them.”

Rick huffed small laugh. “You can say that again.”

“My mother used to sing that song to me,” Juliet revealed. “I hadn’t thought of it in…years. Many of them. I didn’t even realize I still knew the words. But hearing him call for his mother…telling her not to worry…,” she shook her head. “I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“I didn’t even know you could sing,” Rick told her. “Should get you to come up to the stage at the Club.”

Juliet chuckled. “No, thank you. I’m quite happy keeping this talent under wraps.”

She stood then, running a soft hand over Thomas’ dark hair. “Rest up, Magnum,” she said quietly. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

With a smile at Rick, she stepped behind the curtain, leaving him alone with Thomas. The machines attached to his friend hummed and beeped in a strange harmony. He moved around to the other side of the bed, sinking into the chair Juliet had vacated. He picked up Thomas’ hand and frowned, realizing that the Cross of Lorraine ring his friend always wore—they all wore—was missing.

“We had to cut it off,” said a voice from the doorway.

Rick looked up to see Dr. Yeats and a nurse stepping around the edge of the curtain. The nurse pushed a portable computer station and moved close to take Thomas’ vitals.

“The hours in the saltwater caused his hands to swell,” Yeats continued, “and we didn’t want to risk it cutting off his circulation.”

“Do you still have it?” Rick asked. “It’s…pretty important to us. To him.”

Yeats nodded. “It’s in with his personal effects,” he said. “Along with a watch.”

“It was his father’s watch,” Rick stated, watching as the nurse glanced at Dr. Yeats when the thermometer beeped. “So, how is he?”

Yeats leaned over and lifted Thomas’ eyelid, shining his penlight into his bloodshot, brown eyes. He stepped back and checked the information on the nurse’s portable station, then took a slow breath.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Yeats exhaled through pressed flat lips, “he’s not great. But you and I have seen how strong he is. We keep an eye on him, keep on top of the meds and the fluids, he’s got a fighting chance.” The doctor rubbed at his eye with the flat of his fingers. Rick could see weariness seep from every line of this man’s being. “Thing I’m most worried about right now is him developing pneumonia.”

Rick nodded. “I wondered about that,” he confessed roughly. “No idea how much water he’d aspirated when we were able to bring him back.”

Yeats looked at him. “You taking the night shift?”

“I am.”

“He’ll be monitored closely,” Yeats reassured him, “but watch his breathing. If it starts to rattle, or sound choked, let someone know right away.”

“You got it, doc.”

Yeats looked back down at Thomas. “Really hoped I wouldn’t see him in here again. At least not for a while.”

“This time, it wasn’t his fault,” Rick argued.

“The other times weren’t really his fault either,” Yeats lifted a shoulder. “Some people just seem to be…magnets for pain.”

As they left the room, Rick leaned an arm on the bed, hooking his hand in Thomas’, thumb-to-thumb.

“You’re a magnet all right, buddy,” he said softly, eyes on Thomas’ battered face. “You just…draw everyone to you. Don’t you? And it’s not even on purpose.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, then dragging it down his face. He shifted the chair so that he could slump back but still maintain contact with Thomas’ hand.

“There was this guy I knew growing up,” he began, listening to Thomas breathe, watching his eyes roll rapidly beneath his lids as he dreamed, “he was like that. He was one of my uncle’s Army buddy’s. Actually, come to think of it, he was the reason I ever thought about joining up. He just had this…charm. Made you want to be near him. Trust him. I didn’t really pick up on it at the time—I mean, I was just a kid, you know.”

Rick tilted his head, seeing in his mind’s eye the way Thomas would sagely nod, his dark, expressive eyes trained on him like a beacon, taking in every word.

“So, I wasn’t really dialed in yet on all the things my dad and uncle were into, but this…magnetism…they knew how to use that. He was like…one of those bomb-sniffer dogs. They’d send him out on a run, have him test out a deal or a new contact, and if he made it through…they moved forward.”

Rick sighed, shaking his head. “Don’t know if it ever occurred to my old man—or if he flat out just didn’t care. He was like that. But being their bomb-sniffer slowly destroyed this guy. He…grew distant. Lost, I guess. By the time I was in high school, he was just like the rest of them. Sitting on the steps, bottle in a paper bag, waiting for the next job.”

He was quiet a moment, watching Thomas dream.

“Don’t let that be you, brother,” Rick implored softly.

Thomas turned his head slowly, a low groan slipping out through his damaged lips. Rick sat forward, curling his fingers around Thomas’ hand.

“Tommy?”

For a moment nothing else happened, but then an alarm next to Thomas’ bed went off, followed by another, and another until Rick was on his feet hammering on the call button like it was a rifle trigger.

Three nurses pushed through the door, checking machines, checking Thomas.

“I don’t know what happened…they-they just started going off,” Rick stammered, he stumbled back, watching the commotion with wide eyes, wishing with every cell in his body that TC was there.

He needed the big man’s grounding in this moment.

He watched as they removed the nasal cannula, listening to Thomas’ chest, then placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and elevating the head of his bed. One of them injected something into an IV and another adjusted the heated blankets covering Thomas’ lower half.

“Is he okay?” Rick hated the tremor in his voice, but everyone was acting eerily calm against the frantic sounds of the alarms.

One of the nurses turned to him; he recognized her as the one who’d come in earlier with Dr. Yeats.

“His oxygen saturation dropped and his temperature spiked,” she told him. “We are watching both closely, so the alarms are set for higher sensitivity. He’s okay,” she smiled at him. “The oxygen mask will help.”

“What…what can I do?” Rick asked taking a step forward.

“You’re doing it, Mr. Wright,” she assured him. He glanced at her lanyard with her ID clipped to the end. Mariana. He felt a start of surprise. That had been Thomas’ mother’s name as well. “Just stay with him, let him hear your voice. And get some rest yourself. He’ll need you when he wakes up.”

Rick nodded. “Thanks, Mariana.”

“We’ll be right outside,” she reassured him.

When they left, Rick sat back down, texting TC with an update. The night passed slowly, hours ticking by with the feel of heavy feet in sand. Rick alternated talking about the favor he’d had to handle the morning Thomas went out on the outrigger….

“I’m telling you, man, an actual ferret. No joke. Some people are so goddamn strange….”

…to talking about a Netflix show he was currently hooked on…

“It’s called _Bloodlines_ , and I swear to God it makes even my family feel normal. See, there’s this one brother….”

…to wandering around the room with a running commentary about the décor…

“Curtains could really use an update. They’re like a weird mix of pineapple and avocado. And…now I’m hungry….”

…to simply sitting next to Thomas, listening to him breathe.

Every little hitch in Thomas’ breathing, every slight groan, Rick felt his entire being tense up, leaning forward, watching, waiting. The knowledge that Thomas had fought so hard to survive the ocean only to have his fight continue against his body made him want to cry.

The guy never seemed to catch a break.

After several hours, he was unable to keep his eyes open, and leaned forward on the bed, resting his head on his folded arms near where Thomas’ hand rested. Telling himself he was going to just close his eyes for a moment, he allowed himself to drift, the steady beep of the machines turning into the sound of a car horn in his dreams.

He fell into a recollection of running jobs for his father, the feel of a pistol in a too-small hand, Ice Pick grabbing him by the back of his collar and pulling him close in a proud hug. He startled awake when the hand in his hair suddenly felt too real.

Breathing in a sharp burst of air, he stiffened, opened his eyes and very slowly straightened up, Thomas’ hand sliding from his head to his neck, then finally cushioned on his folded arms.

“Tommy?”

The swelling had gone down slightly around Thomas’ eyes, but they were still puffy. The wounded man blinked slowly, opening his eyes enough Rick winced at the deep red surrounding the brown of his irises.

“Hey, there you are,” Rick straightened and leaned forward, surrounding Thomas’ hand with his own.

“’ppened?” Thomas croaked.

“Well…you decided to go for a really, really, _really_ long swim,” Rick told him. “You remember any of that?”

Thomas coughed slightly, his breath fogging up the inside of the oxygen mask. “Hurts.”

“Yeah, I bet it does, pal,” Rick sighed, running a hand through Thomas dark hair. “Hang on—let’s see if we can get that mask off of you.”

He pressed the call button, watching to see if Thomas stayed aware. He had a habit, Rick knew, of waking for only bits at a time when he first regained consciousness after being wounded. But Thomas continued to blink groggily as they waited for the nurse to arrive.

It was Mariana. Rick wondered when her shift actually ended.

“Hello, Mr. Magnum,” she smiled at him, gently taking his wrist and glancing at her watch. Rick liked that—all the high-tech machines in the world couldn’t offer the same comfort as human touch. “Good to see you’re awake.”

Thomas didn’t reply, merely rolled his head toward her.

“Looks like your oxygen levels are doing okay for now,” she told him. “Let’s get you a bit more comfortable.”

She removed the mask and Rick winced to see the groves in Thomas’ battered face from where it had pressed against his skin. After she situated the oxygen cannula, she took out her pen light and checked his eyes.

“Can you see this light?” she asked him, the beam shining directly into his eye. The question surprised Rick, until he remembered Yeats mentioning sun blindness.

“’s…far ‘way,” Thomas managed, his lips cracking with the movement of talking.

“Don’t worry,” Mariana replied. “It’ll come back. How about we take care of those lips?”

Rick watched as Thomas swallowed, pulling air in roughly through his nose. He recognized those signs.

“You okay, buddy?”

“Feel…sick,” Thomas confessed, closing his eyes.

Rick glanced at Mariana. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Thomas to get sick right now. She nodded.

“I got you,” she told him, prepping a syringe after scanning it into his record.

She injected it into his IV and they watched as Thomas’ breath slowed and steadied. She pulled out a small container of petroleum jelly and very gently covered Thomas’ broken lips with it.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Thomas sighed. “Can’t…can’t move.”

Rick watched as Thomas’ throat hitched again, but this time it was from panic, not nausea.

“Your muscles are extremely fatigued, Mr. Magnum,” Mariana told him. “It’s going to be a little while before they want to work again.”

“Rick?”

He tightened his fingers around Thomas’ hand. “Right here buddy.”

“ _No vayas,_ ” Thomas whispered.

Mariana pulled her head up at that, glancing over at Rick in question.

“I’m not going anywhere, man,” Rick promised. “I’m right here.”

“Can’t…can’t s-see you,” Thomas’ voice trembled.

“You can hear me though, yeah?” Rick flexed his fingers around Thomas’ hand.

“Yeah,” Thomas slowly rolled his head in the direction of Rick’s voice. It looked as if he were trying to roll a thousand-pound weight.

“Well, that’s all you need for now,” Rick assured him. “How many missions we go on where I was just a voice in your ear, man?”

“Lots,” Thomas replied, and Rick saw his mouth flex slightly, and damn if that wasn’t an attempt to smile.

“I’m still your Overwatch, Tommy,” Rick promised.

“I’ll be just outside,” Mariana reminded Rick as she lay a soft hand on Thomas’ shoulder before leaving.

“Want to try to sleep again?” Rick asked Thomas.

“No,” Thomas sighed, but then seemed to sink into the pillows, his breath evening out.

Rick huffed a small laugh. “Yeah, I feel ya, pal.”

The hours stretched into early morning. Thomas’ fever spiked twice more, causing the medical staff to adjust the blankets from heated to cooled. Rick took up Juliet’s process—sans the singing, because no one needed that—of cooling Thomas’ head with a soft cloth.

And he talked to him.

About jobs he’d pulled before he could drive, about the military being the thing that kept him out of jail, about what it was like to grow up with a gangster as a father and how Ice Pick was more of a stable influence than anyone else in his young life.

He talked about the first car he stole and the first one he bought legitimately. He talked about learning that trusting people was often more dangerous than scoping out IEDs in Kabul.

The entire time Thomas alternated between muscle spasms and shivers, to sweating through his sheets and groaning from the pain of a fever. He never moved—not more than a miserable turn of his head—but Rick knew if he could have, there would have been moments of thrashing in agony by the sounds that slipped through his wounded lips.

As the sunlight shifted the room to a pearled gray, the light over the bed diming slightly, Rick felt Thomas’ hand tighten around his and he peered closely at his friend’s face.

“Tommy?” he whispered. “You awake?”

Thomas simply tightened his grip once more and Rick saw a tear slip out from the swollen edge of Thomas’ eyes, skip through the dark lashes, and trail down his sunburned face to tuck into the corner of his mouth. Rick swallowed hard at the sight.

“You’re okay, man,” Rick promised, resting the flat of his hand on Thomas’ head, feeling the warmth there seeping into his palm.

“Thanks,” Thomas rasped, swollen eyes still closed.

Rick felt emotion choking him. “For what?”

“Finding…me.” His fingers flexed against Rick’s hand once more.

“Always, Tommy,” Rick replied softly, his voice not quite up to the task of supporting the enormity of his feelings. “You bleed, we bleed.”

Thomas’ lips folded at that and another tear slipped free to follow the trail blazed by the first. Rick took the cool cloth and gently wiped the tear away, not wanting to irritate his skin. Thomas’ fingers curled as much as they could against Rick’s hand, seeking an anchor.

Rick held on tight.

“I got you, brother,” he pledged.

After several moments, Thomas’ hand relaxed and Rick could tell from his breathing that he’d fallen to sleep once more.

“You good?” Came a deep voice from the doorway. Rick didn’t even startle at the sound. Something in him had known TC was close by, had expected it even.

“Honestly, man, I have no fucking idea,” Rick confessed, carefully extracting his hand from Thomas’ and rubbing his face.

TC moved further into the room, eyes on Thomas. “He looks….”

“Wrecked,” Rick supplied. “He looks fucking wrecked.”

“Yeah, but honestly? He looks a little better than yesterday,” TC observed.

Rick blinked at him in surprise. It was a whole new day. Tuesday.

People were leaving their homes to go to work. The staff was setting up for trivia night at the Club. TC was rescheduling clients, Katsumoto was booking the bad guys, Juliet was…doing whatever it was she did on a Tuesday.

And Thomas was surviving.

“Did you get any sleep?” TC asked, drawing Rick’s attention.

He shook his head. “It was…a rough night,” he confessed.

“Go home, grab a few hours, get some food, come back,” TC ordered. “I got him.”

“I’m…kind of afraid to leave,” Rick said, looking back at Thomas. “I promised him I wouldn’t.”

“He won’t be alone,” TC reminded him.

Rick nodded. He wasn’t going to be any good to Thomas if he wore himself out.

“He woke up once and was aware,” he told TC. “He can’t see much, and he can’t really move at all, but he seems to remember what happened. Mostly, he was in and out, and they’re still trying to keep his temperature regulated.”

TC nodded solemnly, taking in the information and stepping over to the chair to take up his post. Rick stood and clapped a hand on TC’s shoulder.

“I’ll text you if anything changes,” TC promised.

Rick nodded. “Thanks, man.” He glanced back at Thomas. “Hang in there, Tommy.”

The next two days were a rotation of watching over Thomas and coping with real life. It was surreal to walk into the Club to deal with bills and inventory and employee issues. Rick couldn’t seem to find the importance in it, though he knew that at some point his life would return to a regular routine and he couldn’t let his livelihood slip while his axis was off-center. He knew TC felt the same.

Juliet had offered to take shifts sitting with Thomas, but neither Rick nor TC wanted their friend to wake without one of them present, so they often doubled-up. Each time Rick came back to the hospital, he looked for improvement. It was hard to find at first—especially when Thomas’ temperature spiked to a terrifying 105 degree Fahrenheit on Tuesday afternoon and Yeats took him for a CT scan to check for increased fluid in the lungs.

Fortunately, they didn’t have to insert a drain, but it was a hard-fought victory. Thomas seemed marginally aware of what was happening to him, but every time his mutterings slipped to Spanish, Rick felt a pang of memory press down and threaten to drag him under.

When Thomas’ fever finally broke, Rick was sitting with Juliet next to the bed. It was just edging on one in the morning on Wednesday, and Thomas began muttering in his sleep.

“I do believe he’s cursing at someone,” Juliet whispered, curled up in one of the spare chairs Mariana had brought in for them. She wore an oversized sweatshirt—Rick suspected it was actually Thomas’, but he didn’t call her on it—and a pair of black yoga pants and her disheveled hair made her look all of twelve. The silver-haired Hughes had returned home days ago, leaving Juliet free to cover rotations with them.

Rick was leaning forward, laying the cool cloth over Thomas’ eyes, listening. He chuckled.

“ _Vete al demonio_ ,” he repeated. “Not sure who he wants to go to hell. Hope it’s not me.” He grinned over at Juliet and got a sleepy smile in return.

Thomas groaned and rolled his head slowly toward Rick, the sound of misery pulling at Rick’s gut.

“When we were in Germany,” he began, eyes on Thomas, not Juliet. “He would shift through like…five languages. All in one sentence.”

“How long were you there?” she asked.

Too long. “About…four weeks?” he replied. “They wanted to send Nuzo and TC home first. They were in better shape than Thomas.”

“What about you?”

Rick shook his head. “Naw, I wasn’t leaving without him.”

Juliet simply nodded, accepting.

“Eventually they just gave up and waited until we could all travel together,” Rick said. “That’s when Nuzo floated Hawaii as an option.”

“So you could all stay together?”

“Yeah,” Rick nodded. “TC, Nuz, and I all had some kind of family in different places, but…trying to rebuild a life near them the way we were after….” He shook his head. “It would have been a disaster. For all of us. And Tommy…,” he slumped back in his chair, looking at his friend but not really seeing him. “He didn’t have anyone left. Just us.”

“And Robin knew that,” Juliet supplied.

“Robin knew a lot of things,” Rick gave her a side grin. “Not sure if Nuzo convinced us before he said something to Robin or the other way around, but eventually it all just…fell together.”

He let his mind’s eye slide back to the morning he and Thomas were standing in the hospital bathroom, Rick helping Thomas shave his beard as his hands still shook too much to hold the razor steady, and Nuzo entered, his eyes on their reflection of the mirror.

 _“We’re going to Hawaii, boys,”_ he’d said, eyes sliding from Rick and settling on Thomas with a kind of _knowing_ in his expression. “ _It’s decided.”_

It was decided; that was that. And they never once looked back.

“Rick,” Juliet said suddenly, sitting forward. “Look.”

Rick looked over at Thomas and saw that his face was lax, the pain that had been pinching it earlier having been siphoned away. At first, a sense of panic shot through him until he saw the read out on the machine above his head—heart rate normal, oxygen saturation acceptable, temp—

“His fever broke,” he whispered with relief.

“Perhaps that’s what he was telling off,” Juliet suggested with a smirk.

Rick smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I told you he was a tough bastard,” he said.

“A fact I will not question again,” Juliet replied, curling back up in her chair.

Thomas didn’t wake again until early Thursday morning. TC was on watch, but Rick hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave. He’d turned sideways in the chair, legs slung over one arm, head pillowed against the back, and was dozing as TC read aloud from a book they’d found on Thomas’ bedside table back at the guide house: _A Hero with a Thousand Faces_ by Joseph Campbell.

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society,” TC’s low voice carried a lilting cadence through Campbells theory, the words like quicksand to Rick’s exhausted mind. “The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”

Rick heard the book rustle as TC shifted in his chair.

“I don’t know, T.M.,” TC chuckled. “This is either way too real or way too existential for me, brother.”

“Was Nuzo’s,” came Thomas’ rough voice, surprising his friends. Rick sat up, shifting around as TC leaned forward.

“What was that?” TC asked, closing the book and setting it aside.

“Book,” Thomas said, clearing his throat and blinking. The swelling had finally gone down around his eyes, leaving only the slowly-healing blisters from the sunburn to frame his orbital bone. “Was Nuzo’s.”

TC chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

He offered Thomas some water, guiding him to finding the straw with his cracked lips.

“How’re you feeling?” Rick asked.

“Beat,” Thomas confessed. He continued to blink, widening his eyes as though trying to bring the world into focus, then narrowing as through the light was too much. “’s all…fuzzy. ‘n gray.”

“It’ll get better,” Rick promised. “Already has from a few days ago. You remember?”

Thomas shook his head slowly. “’s hard to move,” he said. “Am…am I…restrained?”

Rick stood, moving closer to Thomas at the thin sound of his voice. He took his friend’s hand, feeling the distinct difference in the grip as the swelling had gone down.

“No, Tommy,” Rick shook his head, gently lifting Thomas arm to show him he was free. “Your muscles are just used up right now.”

“Wh-why?”

He could feel a slow tremor building in the muscles beneath his fingers. This was different from the weakened tremble or the frozen shudder from before. This was fear, pure and simple. Thomas’ breath began to speed up.

“Whoa, hey now,” TC crooned, sitting forward. “You’re okay, T.M.”

“C-can’t m-move….”

Rick could feel Thomas’ panic saturate the air around them. He glanced at TC, then around the room. Typically, he’d give Thomas something to focus on, to orient and anchor him. But if he couldn’t see—

“Rick?” Thomas called, and Rick felt his fingers close around his wrist, his breath hammering to the point that the machines next him began to flash.

Thinking quickly, Rick grabbed the Tiger’s cap from the bedside table. He shoved it, bill first, into Thomas free hand.

“You feel this, Tommy?”

Thomas seemed to freeze, his trembling fingers closing around the dark blue bill.

“Y-yeah….”

“You know what it is?”

Thomas blinked rapidly.

“B-baseball cap.”

“It’s _your_ baseball cap.”

“T-tigers.”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Your Tiger’s hat. Describe it to me.”

Thomas’ tongue darted out, wetting his lips. His eyes darted frantically, clearly trying to focus, trying to _see_. He released Rick’s wrist, moving to hold the cap with both hands. His fingers skidded and slipped around the bill of the hat, the cloth trembling in his grip.

“C’mon, man,” Rick encouraged, “you guys used to do this to me all the time, remember? Helped keep me focused. You can do this. _Describe_ it.”

Thomas’ breath stuttered, but he closed his fingers around the soft back of the cap.

“S-soft…stitching on the f-front…thick. A h-hard, flat surface. Curved. Stitching in…in ridges.” Thomas’ voice began to even out, his breath slowing as he talked. “A strap in the back. A metal bracket.”

“There you go,” Rick nodded, gently pushing Thomas’ hair from his burned forehead.

Thomas took a long, slow breath, sipping more water as TC offered it. “KIM,” he said as TC pulled the straw away.

“That’s right,” Rick grinned. “You remember that, huh?”

Thomas nodded against the pillow. “Used it. In the…the ocean.”

“You remember anything about what happened?” TC asked.

“Remember all of it,” Thomas said, then coughed slightly, face pulling tight in pain.

Rick used the bed controls and elevated his head so that he was more level with them.

“Better?”

“Thanks,” Thomas nodded. “How…long?”

“It’s Thursday morning,” TC told him, glancing at the clock across the room. “Just in time for breakfast.”

“Thursday,” Thomas breathed.

“We found you early Monday morning,” Rick revealed. “Just about dawn.”

Thomas blinked, eyes roaming the room slowly as if trying find something he could focus on. “Beat my own record,” he said softly. Then his lips pulled up in a small grin. “Ready for that masseuse,” he said, eyes shifting to where he clearly knew Rick was standing, though he didn’t exactly look at him.

Rick recalled their conversation on Saturday about floors not being comfortable—and tried not to think about the reason he’d slept on that floor.

“Tell you what,” he said, pointing at Thomas. “Soon as that sun burn heals up, the masseuse is on me.”

Thomas gave him a smile. “Deal.”

“T.M., I gotta ask…,” TC said, offering Thomas more water. “What was it like?”

Thomas blinked, staring toward the middle distance.

“Cold,” he said finally. “And hot. Like everything was burning and…and freezing at once. And it was quiet and loud at the same time…does that make any sense?”

“Strangely enough…yeah,” Rick replied.

“I couldn’t stop moving,” Thomas said, his voice cracking. “I forgot…there towards the end. I forgot and…and I sank. And it was…it was so, _so_ hard to get back to the top.”

Rick swallowed, remembering seeing Thomas hang suspended in the middle of the sea, grabbing his arm, feeling the weight of him as he pulled him to the surface.

“There was a shark,” Thomas said suddenly.

“Shark?” TC repeated, drawing back.

“He just…circled me a few times,” Thomas said, his eyes falling closed with a grimace of pain. “Didn’t…didn’t attack.”

“Maybe it was an amakua,” TC suggested. “Hawaiians believe some sharks are ancestors and are there to protect us.”

Thomas frowned slightly, but then surprised them both by saying, “My dad…kept it away.”

Rick shot a look over to TC, who frowned.

“Your…dad?” TC asked.

Thomas blinked his eyes open once more, but it was clear the effort cost him. “I mean…a memory of my dad….” He coughed slightly. “It’s nothing. Shark didn’t eat me.”

“That’s a win,” Rick nodded. “How bad you hurting?”

Thomas exhaled slowly, not replying right away.

“C’mon, scale of one to ten.”

“Twelve.”

Rick blinked at the honesty. “I can call the nurse—”

“Nah, man. No more drugs. Not yet.”

They sat for a moment, content with being together and alive.

“I couldn’t…,” Thomas began, then stopped, just breathing. He huffed a frustrated laugh. “Dammit, I can’t move my arms.”

“Need to scratch your nose?” Rick asked, purposefully infusing a teasing tone to the question. He knew Thomas was probably wanting to rub his neck or his hair—both gestures he’d picked up over the years to help mask his anxiety.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about…about Hannah,” he finally confessed.

Rick nodded and TC sighed, sitting back.

“Kept wanting to…I don’t know. Blame her.”

“Me too,” Rick confessed.

“But I was the one…who decided to go out so far in the surf,” Thomas sighed. “This…mess. It’s all me.”

“Well, you and the yahoos who knocked you off your ride,” TC interjected. “And maybe let’s focus on what else you did, man.”

Thomas blinked slowly, rolling his head toward TC’s voice.

“You survived. Twenty some hours in the ocean,” TC leaned forward, resting a gentle hand on Thomas’ sunburned arm. “You _survived_.”

Thomas nodded. “Well…couldn’t leave you guys like that.”

“Damn right, you couldn’t,” Rick agreed, mirroring TC’s hold on Thomas’ other arm. “You bleed—”

“We bleed,” Thomas whispered.

“And don’t you forget that,” TC stated. “Not ever.”

“Copy that,” Thomas nodded, his blinks getting slower, heavier. “Love you guys.”

Neither TC nor Rick responded, both waiting until their friend fell asleep once more, then they sat back.

“I swear, this guy,” Rick shook his head.

TC offered a small grin. “He’s enough to rip your heart out and put it back together again.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Rick looked at where Thomas’ hands lay lax against the sheets.

“Remember there at the end…in the Valley?” Rick started.

TC hummed agreement. “You’re thinking about his kind of make-shift sign language?”

“Yeah. Just thinking it’s gotta be hard to not be able to move his arms,” Rick murmured. “Especially when…y’know, for a while there….”

“It was the only way we knew he was still with us.”

“Yeah.”

Rick grabbed Thomas’ Tiger’s hat from his limp fingers and put it on, tugging the brim down low and leaning back in the chair.

“Hope that don’t affect the good luck, you wearing his hat,” TC teased.

“Next time he wakes up, I want to give him something to try to focus on besides our ugly mugs,” Rick replied.

TC picked up Nuzo’s book once more, leaning back and cracking it open. “You’re a good man, Orville Wright.”

“Yeah, well,” Rick yawned, tugging on the hat brim. “Don’t say that too loud. You’ll ruin my rep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:**
> 
> Dr. Yeats is the same doctor from my story _Witness Marks_. Some of the memories shared in this chapter--like finding Thomas in the jungle--were from that story as well.
> 
> The brief mention of Thomas using a make-shift sign language was a shout-out to **IceQueen1** 's chapters in her 'Bad Things' series where Thomas deals with a broken jaw.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_Thomas  
Wednesday, one week later_

Two days after his fever broke, he was able to sit up in bed. A day after that, they removed his catheter and allowed him to take short, fully assisted walks to the bathroom. Two days after that he was attempting brief walks around the floor of the hospital, clinging to his IV pole for dear life.

Rick and TC were with him every literal step of the way. The muscle pain stole his breath if he moved too suddenly or for too long a time. He felt like he’d literally wrenched his muscles from his bones and taped them back again. His legs trembled with each agonizing step. His arms refused to lift for longer than a few minutes. Frustration with his own weakness warred with relief that he was able to move at all.

As the days passed, his muscles slowly recovered, his shoulder reluctantly began to heal. Only his eyesight seemed to be stubborn about its recovery, though Yeats repeatedly reassured him that it was temporary and that he could already notice improvements. Thomas clung to that promise, to each stronger step, each clearer view, as minuscule as it was. He focused only on that, not on what had triggered his yearning for escape, not on the hours alone. Each day, he made healing his entire purpose.

But each night, he dreamed of the ocean.

He would feel himself caught in its rolling embrace, bobbing on the surface, tugged beneath the waves. Dreams of the ocean folded into dreams of the cave, the hole, and the feeling of a cloth stretched over his face as buckets of icy water swept over him.

He woke one morning gasping desperately for air, his neck straining as he fought the suffocating barrage. Before consciousness truly helped him, he was reaching for his face, desperate to free himself from the suffocating cloth, frantic for air.

He’d ended up pulling his nasal cannula loose and feeling two slim, cool hands at his wrists, an urgent voice pleading with him to _breathe_.

Opening his eyes, he saw a blurred smudge of blond hair. He hadn’t quite realized what he was saying until Juliet’s voice reassured him with delicate firmness that _no_ , he wasn’t being waterboarded. And _no_ , he wasn’t in the ocean. He was safe. He could breathe.

“Higgy?” He rasped, his voice cracking with awareness as he said her name.

“Yes,” she replied, her relief palpable. “Yes, it’s me, Magnum.”

He’d let her lower his arms and replace his cannula, still unable to really see her. He simply focused on her voice.

“Could’ve…could’ve sworn I was…,” he’d whispered.

Juliet sighed softly, one of her hands resting against his cheek. “I know,” was all she’d said.

The dreams of the ocean were easier to handle than the flashbacks to being waterboarded. One night, he woke with Rick’s voice firm in his ear, ordering him to open his eyes. He obeyed, seeing nothing but smudged blackness around him.

“Listen to my voice, Tommy,” Rick’s tone brooked no quarter. “You’re safe, you hear me? They can’t get to you anymore.”

“Not…,” he’d gasped, trying to find balance in the nondescript blackness surrounding him. “Not…waterboard—”

“Hell no, man,” Rick’s hands were warm at the sides of his face, his thumbs pressing gently against his cheekbones. “Never again, I swear. I _swear_.”

“Felt…felt so real,” Thomas confessed, forcing his lungs to slow their desperate grasps for air, pressing his cracked lips closed and forcing breathes through his nose. “Too fucking real.”

“It wasn’t real,” Rick asserted. “I’m real. Higgy’s real. You’re in Hawaii. You hear the sea? Just outside the window.”

Thomas flinched. He could hear it over the beeps of the machines, the sounds of the traffic. At some point, someone had opened the window in his room—most likely thinking the fresh air would be a welcome respite from the closed in feeling of the hospital room.

But that sound…it shook through him, an anchor at his heels, pulling him beneath the surface, pressing against him until his heart hammered at the base of his throat, choking him.

“Perhaps that’s the problem,” Juliet’s voice swam over him, the gentle murmur tugging on his scattered attention. “Rick, close the window.”

Rick’s hands had disappeared and in moments the room was suddenly, blessedly still. No waves, no tide, no feel of liquid suffocation. Just machine beeps, muted voices on overhead speakers, and the quieting murmurs of his friends. Thomas allowed himself to sink back into the dark peace of sleep with Rick’s hand on his wrist and Juliet’s voice in his ear.

TC had been next to him two days ago when he started in on physical therapy for his shoulder. The infected tissue had been abraded and repaired, the muscles needing special attention beyond just the rest prescribed.

“ _Fuck_ , this hurts,” he’d panted, sitting on the edge of his bed, slowly pulling against an over-sized rubber band hooked to the closed bathroom door, his ab muscles protesting his upright posture with a trembling vengeance.

“Use that pain, T.M.,” TC had coached. “Let it fuel you.”

“Hate getting shot,” Thomas grumbled. “It’s the worst.”

“Is it, though?” TC countered, finding whatever ways he could to distract him. It was an old tactic, but it always worked. “I can think of worse.”

“Name…one,” Thomas panted, pulling the band.

TC kept his hand at Thomas’ back, bracing him. Balancing him. Pushing him to finish one more rep.

“Choking on a ghost pepper,” TC suggested.

Thomas barked out a surprised laugh. He pulled again, the ache in his shoulder now familiar, the muscles trembling. He’d flashed for a moment to the feel of saltwater burning the opened wound, fire crawling beneath his skin.

“Stepping on a sea urchin,” TC continued, still close to Thomas, but at once miles away. Thomas pulled again. “Eating a puffer fish….”

Thomas suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Drowning,” he gasped.

TC gently grasped his arm, easing his fingers open and took the rubber band from him, letting it drop to the floor. Thomas felt his hands on either side of his face, forcing him to focus even if he couldn’t see.

“Thomas,” TC said, his voice low and steady. “You made it, man. You didn’t drown. You made it.”

Thomas tried to nod, but TC’s hands held his head fast. He lifted his trembling arms, wrapping his fingers around TC’s wrists.

“You with me?”

“Yeah,” Thomas managed, keeping hold of TC’s wrists as he lowered his hands. “Still sucks getting shot, though.”

TC chuckled. “Not gonna fight ya on that, T.M. You’d know best.”

“Damn straight.”

Now, he was sitting in a chair, facing the window of his room, alone for the first time since he’d been in the ocean.

Well, marginally alone. Rick was down the hall filling out release forms and TC was getting the Island Hoppers van so they could take him home. He still couldn’t walk unaided, bright lights gave him a migraine, he couldn’t see faces, his shoulder was still heavily bandaged with his arm in a sling, and his skin was peeling in rather unattractive layers, but he was ready to be out of this room.

To smell something different than antiseptic and hear something different than the beeps of machines.

He startled slightly at a knock on the door.

“Magnum?” Katsumoto called from the other side of the curtain. “You in there?”

Thomas chuckled. “I can’t go ten steps without falling flat on my face,” he said, half-turning in the chair. “Where else would I be?”

Katsumoto stepped into the room. Thomas squinted, trying to focus, then widened his eyes attempting to bring in more light. None of it worked; Katsumoto was still a smudge of white with dark hair as he came closer.

“Seeing any better?” he asked.

“Instead of a big dark blur I see a big light blur,” Thomas quipped.

“Funny,” Katsumoto chuckled.

Thomas sensed him moving closer but couldn’t turn further. Katsumoto saved him from asking for help by rotating the chair with Thomas in it to face the doorway, then leaned against the foot of Thomas’ bed. Thomas shifted the sling holding his left arm so that the strap didn’t rub quite as much against his sun-burned neck. Juliet had wrapped the strap in several layers of cloth, but the weight still got to him every so often.

“You look better,” Katsumoto commented. “You’re peeling like a snake, but…you look better.”

“Thanks,” Thomas grimaced good naturedly.

Katsumoto was silent for a moment—long enough that Thomas grew a bit anxious not being able to see his face.

“I have someone who would like to talk to you,” Katsumoto finally said, the words coming out in a rush as if he wanted to get as far away from them as he could.

“Talk to me?” Thomas asked, trying to keep his gaze as close to where he knew Katsumoto’s face was as he could.

Katsumoto cleared his throat. “I saw you the day you were brought in…the day Rick and TC found you,” he confessed. “And then I saw you the next day. And the next.”

Thomas swallowed, listening to the tension creep into Katsumoto’s voice. He hadn’t realized the Detective had come by that often.

“And I couldn’t help but think about…that day in the jungle when…when I had to bring you back to life.”

Thomas felt his still-healing lips bounce in a reflexive smile. “Thought we were never to speak of that.”

“Yeah, well…things change, Magnum,” Katsumoto replied. “You are pretty much the single most infuriating person I have ever met. But…you’re still my friend.”

Thomas smiled, letting his gaze slide to the floor, relaxing.

“And seeing my friend just so…so damaged,” Katsumoto paused, and Thomas sensed a shift in the air as the man stood. “I couldn’t just let that go.”

“Gordon…what did you do?” Thomas brought his face up once more, but lost track of Katsumoto.

“I went after the guys who knocked you from your outrigger with…rather extreme prejudice,” Katsumoto told him, and Thomas tracked his voice to the blurred image now standing at the base of the hospital bed. “Turns out two of them are legal adults—one is twenty-one, the other twenty-three. And they are being charged with reckless endangerment and attempted manslaughter.”

“ _Jesus_ , Gordon,” Thomas breathed. “I mean, are you sure? I’m fine.”

“You’re _not_ fine, Magnum,” Katsumoto barked, and Thomas jerked in reaction to the sudden sound. “You can’t see, you can’t even walk yet, and you…. I can’t get that image of you out of my head. From when you were brought in. I’ve seen you look bad before but that….”

Thomas felt himself curl forward slightly in the chair, wanting to get small enough to avoid the missile strikes that were Katsumoto’s words.

“In any case,” Katsumoto took a breath, “one of them has asked the judge for leniency, which she agreed to on the grounds he visit you, talk to you, and understand the severity of his actions.”

“Which one?”

“The younger one,” Katsumoto informed him.

“Where is he now?” Thomas asked, attempting to square his shoulders.

Katsumoto paused a moment, then said, “He’s outside at the nurse’s station with Rick.”

Thomas blinked. “You left him with _Rick_?”

“I figured the nurses would keep him alive long enough to serve his time if Rick decided to do something.”

Thomas smiled slightly, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, I’ll talk to him.”

“Thanks, Thomas,” Katsumoto sighed with evident relief.

Thomas huffed a small laugh. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you use my first name before.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Katsumoto grumbled and started to turn toward the door.

“Hey, Gordon,” Thomas called, pausing the man. “Thank you. For finding those guys, I mean. I don’t know how you did it, but…just, thank you.”

“I had to do something,” Katsumoto confessed. “And I couldn’t help anyone here. This was the only….”

Thomas could hear how much his friend—because despite their occasional barbed exchanges and Katsumoto’s paper-thin trust, they _were_ friends—had needed to take this action. He remembered how much he wanted to find the bastards who killed Nuzo, how much he _needed_ to make someone pay for hurting someone important to him.

“I get it,” he nodded. “Go get the kid before Rick decides he needs to be admitted.”

Thomas waited for several tense minutes before he heard footsteps approaching again. He could tell it was more than just Katsumoto and his charge by the way the room seemed to suddenly press around him.

“Rick?” he called, head tilted toward the door to the room.

“I’m here,” Rick replied, his voice tight, clipped, like the burst retort of machine gun fire.

“Thomas Magnum, this is James Slovick.”

Thomas heard sneakers shuffling across the linoleum-covered floor and a blurred image came closer to him. He purposefully looked just to the left of the blurred image when he spoke.

“I’d stand up to say hi, but my legs aren’t working too well right now,” he said.

“They never said you were paralyzed,” the kid commented, an underscore of fear riding a current beneath the tough exterior of his tone.

“Well, I’m not,” Thomas said, “but when you have to tread water for over twenty hours in the middle of the ocean, your body kind of shuts down on you. It’s going to take a while to get everything working again.”

“You blind, too?”

Thomas lifted a shoulder. “For now,” he said. “It’s pretty damn bright out there.”

The feet shifted again. “Thought they said you were a SEAL.”

“I am.”

“Thought SEALs were supposed to be bad ass or something.”

Thomas wished he could see the kid’s face. He could picture Rick’s right now in response to that statement, and he sensed Katsumoto stepping sideways to put himself between Rick and the kid as a precaution.

“We are,” Thomas replied.

“Just saying…thought this kind of thing would be nothing to you,” James said, and Thomas could hear defiance growing in his tone.

“You know, it’s funny,” Thomas said, sinking in his chair as his back muscles began to spasm. “I said the same thing to myself out there. I was freezing, but my skin was burning. And my legs kept cramping up. And I’d already faced down one shark and had no idea if any others were in the area. And I was _so_ thirsty, man. I have never been that thirsty. But I kept saying to myself _you’re a goddamn Navy SEAL. This is nothing_.” The kid sniffed and Thomas felt the pressure in the room shift. “I must have said it to myself a hundred times. This is nothing. This is _nothing_.”

Thomas felt a weighted silence stem from Rick and Katsumoto.

“Yeah, well,” James mumbled.

“Thing is, James,” Thomas said softly, his gaze drifting to the floor. “It wasn’t nothing. It was harder than anything I’ve ever had to do. And I was in a POW camp in Afghanistan for eighteen months.”

“You were?” James asked, suddenly sounding incredibly, heart-breakingly young.

“Want to know why this was harder?”

The kid was silent; Thomas imagined he could hear Rick’s heart pounding from across the room.

“Because I was alone,” Thomas spoke up. “No one but you knew where I was. And I couldn’t save myself. I knew the only way I was going to live was if someone found me.”

“So…who did?”

“My friends,” Thomas replied, smiling softly. “They knew something wasn’t right and pieced together the clues…and didn’t stop until they brought me home.”

“Got some good friends, man.”

“I do,” Thomas nodded. “But y’know…if you’d said something. If you’d stopped…none of that would have happened.”

The room was a heavy kind of quiet. Thomas hadn’t realized he was going to say that when he started talking but now that it was out there, he let it lay in the middle of them, let the kid think about it while he tried not to.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Magnum,” James said quietly. “You don’t know how sorry. I didn’t…I didn’t even know…we were all drinking and Sal wasn’t paying attention and we figured…I mean, you could still see the land and…I didn’t know about the current and…I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

By the time he finished speaking, James was crying. Thomas wanted to comfort him somehow, but he knew this was what the kid needed: remorse. Some of the best lessons in life were built from genuine remorse.

“I’m glad you’re sorry,” Thomas said, weariness seeping into his tone as he let his head drop back, the muscles in his neck trembling. “Because now maybe you’ll respect the ocean more. You’ll pay closer attention out there. It’s not some big…swimming pool. People die. I…I should have died.”

He felt his throat close at those words, repeating them almost to himself in realization. “I _should have_ died.”

“But you didn’t,” Rick spoke up from the back of the room. “Because you’re a bad ass Navy SEAL.”

“And stubborn as hell,” Katsumoto chimed in.

Thomas swallowed the knot of emotion that sat at the base of his throat and forced a trembling smile onto his face.

“Just…remember this, James,” Thomas said quietly. “Whatever the judge says…remember this.”

“I will,” James promised. “I swear.”

“Let’s go, kid,” Katsumoto said. “You got an appointment with the judge. I’ll catch you later, Magnum.”

Thomas heard their feet retreating from the room. When they’d gone, he reached up to rub his aching eyes, wanting to sleep for a week.

“You still with me, bud?” Rick’s voice was closer now.

“I’m here.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I got something for you,” Rick said.

“A shot of tequila?”

“Ha! Funny guy,” Rick chuckled. Thomas felt him pick up his hand and something small drop into his palm. “You can thank Juliet for that.”

Thomas moved his fingers around it. “It’s my ring,” he said in wonder. “She fixed it?”

“Well, she had it fixed,” Rick shrugged. “Need some help?”

Thomas shook his head, sliding the Cross of Lorraine ring back over his finger, relishing the feel of it being where it belonged.

“You ready to go home?”

Thomas blinked blearily up to where Rick’s voice came from. “Hell yes.”

It was quite the ordeal, his going home. Leaving the hospital was the easiest part.

From there it was a bit of a battle of wills between Juliet and Rick as to where Thomas would stay, who would watch over him, how his care should be structured. Thomas sat in the front of the van with TC, listening to the two of them bicker like siblings in the back. When they pulled up to the stone lot of the estate, TC went around to the passenger side and helped Thomas out of the van.

They were making a slow, awkward trek down to the guest house before Juliet and Rick realized they’d made half of the decisions for them. Thomas was grateful for the backdrop of their argument; it blocked out the sound of the sea that suddenly seemed a lot closer than it had before. The flutter of panic that rose at simply hearing that sound twisted his stomach. 

“Are you sure this is the best idea, Magnum?” Juliet argued. “There is plenty of room in the main house, and Robin practically insisted—”

“It’s fine, Higgins,” Thomas replied tiredly as TC maneuvered them into the guest house. He just needed to sleep, just for a few hours. “I’ll be fine.”

“You will hardly be fi—”

“Higgy,” TC shut her down. “It’s okay. He’s going to need all of us for a while.”

Thomas heard Juliet’s teeth clack together as she shut her mouth. He smiled to himself as TC helped him into his bed, sighing with happiness as he sank into the soft mattress and fresh sheets. He never knew if TC left the room, he fell asleep that fast.

His sleep was, thankfully, dreamless. That was something he’d mark as a win with this whole ordeal: he hadn’t dreamed of Hannah since the day he was rescued. He’d dreamed of fire and pain, of waterboarding and beatings, of his father, mother, and Nuzo.

But not Hannah.

He woke up in a room by himself for the first time in over a week. He lay still for a moment, simply breathing in the soft gray light that wrapped around him. He could hear movement in the living room and outside on the lanai. He knew his friends were close; he wasn’t truly alone. And for that, he was grateful.

Standing shakily from his bed, he had to pause to breathe slowly as his equilibrium caught up with his changed position. Using furniture and walls as support, he made his way to the bathroom without calling anyone for help. He knew his room in the dark, it stood to reason he could navigate it with his damaged vision. He turned on the bathroom light instinctively, flinching back at the brightness and flicking it off immediately.

It wasn’t as if he could see his reflection anyway.

Scratching at the scruff that had grown along his jaw over the last week and a half, he fumbled through the cabinets until he found towels, then made his way to the shower. It took everything in him to finish the shower without falling over. He was so damn tired of his muscles aching, of the trembling soreness that hung out in his joints, along his bones, perfectly happy to steal his breath and squeeze out a groan of pain when he simply couldn’t hold it back any longer.

By the time he was done, he was shaking so hard, he had to sit on the closed lid of the toilet, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Thomas?”

Rick’s voice was a welcomed relief on the other side of the door.

“Yeah,” he managed, his voice trembling with just that one word.

“You good, man?”

“I, uh…could use some help.”

Rick stepped inside and Thomas closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing. He heard the snap of the light bulb filaments as Rick turned on the switch—he may not need the light, but Rick did. The soft brush of a towel felt wonderful on the top of his head, rubbing his hair dry, then draping around his shoulders.

“You bring any clothes in here with you?” Rick asked.

“I kinda forgot,” Thomas confessed, blinking his eyes open, staring at the blurred image of the floor mat as he got used to the brightness.

Rick said nothing, just stepped away and in a moment was back with clean, dry clothes that were soft against his still sensitive skin. Thomas reached up, gripping Rick’s shoulder for balance. They’d done this routine several times while he was still in the hospital; modesty had no place between them anymore.

“You should be wearing that sling, you know,” Rick admonished as he helped him dress.

“Pulls against the sunburn,” Thomas complained.

“Yeah, I figured.”

“Hey…, uh,” Thomas started, unsure how to ask this next favor. Rick leaned him against the bathroom counter, waiting him out. “Any chance you think you could help me with…this?” He scratched at the scruff.

“Have a seat, my good man,” Rick guided him to the closed toilet lid once more. He draped a towel backwards around his throat and chest. “I’ll have you fixed up like new in no time.”

Thomas chuckled, shaking his head as Rick slathered the shaving cream on his face. “You did this for me in Germany, too.”

“Twice,” Rick recalled.

“I only remember once,” Thomas replied.

“That’s because you were unconscious for the first one.”

“A little intrusive, don’t you think?” Thomas teased.

Rick huffed. “Does it help if I remind you that Nuzo told me to?”

“Ah, good point. He did out-rank you,” Thomas conceded. “You didn’t have much of a choice.”

They were silent for a moment. Thomas let his mind wander as Rick continued to carefully shave his whiskers from his cheeks and jawline.

“Hey, one silver lining,” Rick said, breaking into Thomas’ musings on the best ways to avoid hearing the sea from his lanai. “Your bruise is all healed up.”

“My bruise?”

“From my fist,” Rick wiped his jawline clean with a damp towel.

Thomas huffed out a laugh, then let it build until he was practically weeping with the force of it. He had to lean forward, hands on his knees, trying to steady his breathing. When he finally calmed down, he pulled in a slow breath and realized that Rick was crouched in front of him, waiting him out.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, Tommy?”

“I forgot all about you hitting me,” Thomas tried, but knew that wasn’t going to satisfy his friend.

“I know I’m not Balboa, but…that little display of hysterics wasn’t just about my punching abilities.”

Thomas let Rick finish cleaning off the shaving cream and help him stand before he answered, his hands pausing at his elbows as he made sure he was balanced.

“I…I think I’m afraid of hearing the sea.”

He felt Rick’s hands still, fingers gripping with a bit more intensity than just stabilizing him.

“Just hearing it?”

“It…I feel panicked. Like I can’t breathe right. I’ve…I don’t know what’s going on with me,” Thomas shook his head, reaching up to rub at his aching head. “Can you cut the lights, man? It’s messing with my eyes.”

“Sure,” Rick released him and a moment later, the bathroom was dim once more. “Tommy…you might not like this, but…I— _we_ —got an idea.”

Thomas dropped his hand from his head, then reached out to find Rick’s shoulder. “What kind of an idea?”

“One that we think you need…,” Rick cleared his throat nervously. “But you gotta trust us.”

Thomas frowned. “I can’t see and I can barely walk,” he reminded his friend. “Trust is basically all I got going for me right now.”

“Okay, well…good.”

Rick pulled his arm across his shoulders, easing him through the doorway of his room. The ache in his legs was eased by the heat of the shower, but he’d been on his feet for longer than he had in days and he could feel the tremble begin at the base of his abs, working outward. He curled his fingers in Rick’s shirtsleeve as they headed down the hall to the living room where TC was waiting. Thomas could tell the big man was sitting in the far chair, but he couldn’t clearly see what he held in his hands.

“Are you _still_ reading that _Hero’s Journey_ book?” Rick asked.

“It’s fascinating,” TC replied.

“Well, take a book break,” Rick told him. “We got a job to do.”

“Copy that,” TC replied, and Thomas sensed him stand and approach them.

He was standing almost fully supported by his friends, unable to see either one clearly, feeling as though he was the only one in the room who didn’t know what was happening in that moment.

“Guys, what are you…?”

“T.M., we figured you might…struggle a bit, being back here, this close to the ocean,” TC told him.

He felt Rick nod. “Yeah, so…we thought we’d do this in stages. Kinda like…easing you back in the saddle.”

Thomas blinked. Saddle? “Uh, guys…no way I’m ready for an outrigger right now.”

TC chuckled. “Have some faith, brother.”

Rick turned him and Thomas found himself being led through the living room and across the lanai to the lawn that stretched out to the private beach. They paused for a moment as TC fit sunglasses over his sensitive eyes, protecting him from the late-afternoon sun as it searched for the surface of the water.

“You want your ball cap?” Rick asked.

Thomas shook his head. “Not yet. Head’s still too burned.”

“Good point.”

“Are…are the dogs around?” Thomas asked as they made their way slowly across the lawn. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to dodge them the way his legs were shaking.

“They’re with Higgins,” Rick said. “She’ll meet us on the beach.”

He could smell the sand. And the salt. And the unique odor of sea that spoke of depth and life and strength and danger. It seemed to seep into him the closer they drew. He felt his breathing begin to pick up, a panic that he’d never felt before wrapping around him.

“Easy, man,” Rick said softly. “You got this.”

“Don’t…don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he gasped.

“Just one step at a time, Thomas,” TC encouraged. “We got four chairs right in front of you.”

Thomas reached out a hand and felt the wooden tops of the Adirondack chairs that hadn’t been there a week ago. Rick eased him down into one and he buried his toes in the sand at his feet, gripping the wide, flat arms of the chair tightly. The late day wind picked up and tossed the waves gently against the beach, the sound familiar and terrifying.

He closed his eyes, blocking out even the attempt to see what was in front of him, flashes of open water, of a shark fin, of endless blue around him, beneath him, above him striking him like blows from a fists, hurting more than Rick’s knuckles ever could.

It had once been home. A requiem for the origin of who he was now. It had once been his peace.

But the sound…the _smell_ of it. He felt tears burn the backs of his eyes, his hands trembling against the arms of the chair. He had no idea where Rick and TC were…if Juliet and the lads were near.

It was just him, the sea, and the fear.

_They turned us into weapons…and they told us to find peace._

He’d found it, once. And he lost it. Without this peace, was he simply a weapon? He didn’t know how to be that anymore.

_Let’s play the alphabet game, Tommy_.

His father challenged his doubts, faced his fears head-on. At least that’s what his mother had said. He’d started this whole thing to do just that—to rid himself of the doubt, the fear that seeing Hannah again had shot though him. Quite literally.

_Your father knew you’d bring great honor to our name, but that it would cause you great pain._

“How about taking a slow breath for us,” Rick said, suddenly closer than Thomas realized.

He tried. He held his breath, then exhaled slowly, opening his eyes and blinking against the salt-tinged breeze. He felt the panic reach for his throat once more and he held his breath again.

_You don’t quit. That’s all you gotta do. Not quit._

He couldn’t hide from this. Not _this_. Not now. He knew what he needed to do.

“Help me up,” he demanded, his voice trembling.

“Thomas—”

“Help me up,” he ordered, infusing an edge into his words, making them impossible to deny.

Rick’s hand lay on his shoulder for a moment, then slid down to cup his elbow and draw him to his feet. He moved slowly away from Rick, his feet shuffling carefully through the sand so that he didn’t stumble, his legs feeling as though they were made of glass. The sound of the waves grew louder, the smell stronger. He tossed away his sunglasses, closing his sensitive eyes against the muted glare of the setting sun.

_Not worried about you letting me down, kid_. _That’s never been an issue. Worried about you not watching out for yourself. This is not an adventure._

“Biggest adventure of our lives,” Thomas whispered, gasping an unsteady breath as the waves brushed against his bare feet.

He swayed; the sand sucked from beneath him as the water retreated. Before he could lose his balance, two hands reached out to brace him, one at each elbow. TC and Rick stood on either side of him, their feet in the surf. Without his having to ask, they stepped forward, guiding him into the waves until the water hit mid-calf.

Thomas felt his breathing hitch with the feel of the wet sand, the cold of the water.

It had been home once. And he wanted to be welcome there again.

“You will be, man,” Rick said quietly.

“D-didn’t mean to s-say that out l-loud,” Thomas stammered, the chill cutting through him. “I’m just so…so fucking tired of being scared.”

“You don’t have to be scared, Tommy,” Rick said. “You got us.”

“And we aren’t going anywhere,” TC rumbled.

They stood for several long moments, the water lapping at their legs, the heat of the sun cooling as it sank into the waves. He couldn’t quite see it yet, but he knew he would. He couldn’t quite stand on his own, either, but he didn’t have to.

“You bleed, I bleed,” he whispered.

Rick and TC stood on either side of him, hands at his elbows, steady anchors in the waves.

And he was home.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> My sincere thanks for reading. Fanfic is a true escape--and right now, with the world as it is and everyone sequestered for the duration, we all need a bit of an escape. I'm not sure where the next idea will take me, or what fandom the muse will seek to explore, but I always look forward to the adventure. And I _always_ appreciate the gift of your time. 
> 
> Stay safe, everyone.


End file.
